Scholars and community leaders will gather Wednesday, April 13 at the School of Social Service Administration to discuss a variety of issues related to migration at a conference titled, “Migrant Rights in an Era of Globalization: The Mexico-U.S. Case.”
The symposium will bring together the academic and activist worlds involved on both sides of the border. “We developed this symposium as the field of social welfare has been slow to recognize the economic and political conditions of migrants in cities,” said William Sites, Associate Professor at SSA, who is one of the panelists.http://mexicanstudies.uchicago.edu/
“We think about migrants in a single-country context, and we need to think of them within a multi-country context,” he added. “We want to shed light on areas of research that are separate and yet are integrative.”
The conference is intended to bridge the divide between social movement literature on migrant rights, which recognizes bi-national connections, and social work literature, which sees the importance of extending practice strategies to new communities. “The field of social work has been very U.S.-centric and only recently have the effects of globalization been recognized in a practice setting,” Sites said.
Symposium panelists will discuss the political economy of transnational labor citizenship and emigrant/immigrant organizing in the United States.
“Much in the same way that migrant activism crosses political and geographic boundaries, this symposium will cross-disciplinary and institutional boundaries to better understand and engage movements for migrant rights,” said Jacob Lesniewski, a graduate student at SSA who is organizing the symposium.
The conference will open at 1 p.m. with remarks from Susan Gzesh, Executive Director of the Human Rights Program and Senior Lecturer in the College at the University of Chicago.
Afternoon panels will include “The Political Economy of Transnational Labor Citizenship” and “Homelands and Hometowns: Emigrant/Immigrant Organizing in the U.S.” Maricela Garcia, director for Capacity-Building at the National Council of La Raza, will deliver closing remarks at 4:45 p.m.
The conference is co-sponsored by SSA, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, the Human Rights Program, and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.
The conference is free and open to the campus community, but registration is requested at https://ssanet.uchicago.edu/RSVP/MigrantRights.
—Prof. Chuan He
