Trip Descriptions

For 2024 Spring immersions, trips (including travel) are scheduled for Spring Break, Saturday, March 3rd – Saturday, March 9, 2024. Immersions include several mandatory pre-trip sessions. Please note that some trips may fly, some may travel by car, and one immersion requires a passport for global travel. There are NO participant fees or fundraising requirements. Participants are now eligible to apply their Federal Work-Study award to the ABP participant position. (As a reminder, you may only hold one FWS position at a time at Georgetown.)

Read below for more information about each of our six immersions.

Magis GU272+

• Location: DC, Maryland, and Louisiana (flying to Louisiana)
• Primary themes: enslavement, reparations, GU272+
• Description: Our vision for the immersion is to engage the institution of Georgetown in an open process that enables dialogue, reflection, community building, and tangible change for those who have been victimized by Georgetown’s settler colonial practices throughout history. We plan to engage with Descendant communities in our trip through D.C., Maryland, and Louisiana so that their diverse voices can be heard on a personal level, emphasizing resilience and agency throughout the process. Reparations, community engagement, and testimony are all priorities of our immersion which we hope will lead to restoration, transformation, and justice.

Borderlinks Border Immersion

• Location: Nogales, AZ and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico (flying to Arizona; passport required for border crossing)
• Primary theme: migrant justice
• Description: Borderlinks Immersion strives to build participants’ understanding of immigration and intersecting issues. Through interactions with a wide range of stakeholders in the Arizona-Mexico border region, participants will learn about the structures that shape migration and gain a firsthand look at different sides and stages of the issue. This border immersion trip is a collaborative effort among Georgetown participants and Migrant Justice community leaders to gain a deeper understanding about immigration and systems that govern immigration from a humanitarian and legal perspective. We will attempt to humanize the issue, escape reductive misconceptions by recognizing the complexity of the issue, and address biases through learning from the people directly impacted. Participants will develop proficiency in migrant justice language, familiarize themselves with the site of deportation and migration, and deepen understanding of the different stages of the migration process: the motivations for migration, the experience of migration, and the challenges faced by migrants in the United States. Ultimately, the Borderlinks Immersion aims to facilitate a sustained commitment to education, activism, and solidarity with the migrant justice movement in our communities on the Hilltop, in DC, and around the country.

Spring Break in Appalachia: Mountain Environmental Justice

• Location: Harlan, KY
• Primary theme: environmental justice
• Description: SBIA participants will engage with residents of and activists in Harlan, Kentucky in order to learn how the United States’ declining coal industry has affected Appalachia’s economy, and in turn, its local lifestyle. Through this immersion, we hope to gain a deeper appreciation for the region’s coal culture (the cultural habits that develop in coal-dependent communities) and examine how transitioning toward a “green” economy affects this culture through the issues of gender, race, age, and art. Throughout the immersion, we will work closely with many community partners that focus on a variety of community building, environmentally driven topics: environmental conservation, indigeneity, rural-urban divides, community development, and more. These topics have proven especially relevant since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and extreme weather due to climate change, which has widened disparities in the area and strained relationships with the environment. Our primary objectives are to return to Georgetown with a greater sense of empathy for those affected by the declining coal industry, a complex and personal reconciliation between coal economies and the environment, and an appreciation for the Appalachian mountain culture that binds communities together.

Worker’s Justice DC

• Location: Washington, DC
• Primary theme: worker/labor justice
• Description: Worker’s Justice DC, in partnership with the Kalmanovitz Initiative (KI), seeks to gain a holistic understanding of worker’s justice. We will learn in solidarity with workers from a range of DC communities (including immigrant workers, workers of color, LGBTQ+ workers, and temporary workers) as well as stakeholders who directly impact workers’ rights such as labor unions, nonprofits, and grassroots organizations. We will investigate the multifaceted injustices workers face while actively working to acknowledge how our own identities and background influence our work. As we critically reflect on our positionality as Georgetown students and members of the DC community, we will discuss strategies like protesting, letter writing, canvassing, advocacy, and service which empower participants to continue organizing around labor rights. It is essential to situate this topic within the broader context of intersecting issues: housing justice, food scarcity, access to healthcare, mass incarceration/prison labor, undervaluing of domestic work, and the globalizing economy/”post-pandemic” economy. Participants will immerse themselves in the city and local communities, engage with DC beyond Georgetown’s campus, gain exposure to different pathways of activism, and develop a long-term commitment to improving labor rights.

Racial Justice Immersion

• Location: Detroit, Michigan
• Primary theme: racial justice
• Description:  The Detroit ABP Immersion will explore the intersectional tensions within historical racial injustices through an analysis of racial dynamics in education, housing, and the environment. Participants will challenge concepts of racial justice and social activism and reflect on personal experiences with race informing our interactions and engagement with common themes of the immersion. Through conversations and work with community partners in Detroit working in education, housing, and environmental justice spaces, we will learn how to strengthen our solidarity in the long-term and critically consider the role of race in these realms and in our lives.

The Industrial Commons

• Location: North Carolina
• Primary theme: Labor Justice
• Description: The North Carolina Alternative Breaks Program immersion trip is a deep dive into the concept of labor justice through a nuanced consideration of sustainable manufacturing. Perhaps more than ever, consumers and students alike are wanting to leave a better impact on the world through their individual choices but what does it mean for a company to be sustainable? And, is it possible to account for the needs of workers and business owners alike to achieve a profitable, successful, and sustainable ‘circular economy’ in the process? Participants will be introduced to different perspectives on  sustainable manufacturing that involves the lives’ of workers, the factory owners, and various global and local issues through the context of textile factories in North Carolina. Our ABP team will define and classify actors in the textile industry, conceptualize sustainable manufacturing, analyze business model sustainability, and observe the application of social justice action and implications for laborers.