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Pushing the Boundaries of Migration Studies:
Perspectives from the U.S. and France
May 5th, 2014
The Weatherhead Center, Harvard University
61 Kirkland Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Sponsored by the Social Science Research Council; and the Transnational Studies Initiative, Center for European Studies, Center for American Political Studies, and Department of Anthropology at Harvard University
Opening Remarks: 8:45am
Panel 1: 9am - 10:30am: New Perspectives on Transnationalism and Migrant Networks
Asad Asad (Doctoral Candidate, Sociology, Harvard University): Mexico-U.S. Migration in Time: From Economic to Social Mechanisms
Clara Rachel E. Casseus (PhD, University of Poitiers) Mapping a Socio-spatial Mobility Pattern: The Case of Cross-Border Mobilities between French Guiana, Surinam and Brazil
Elizabeth Benedict Christensen (PhD fellow, Copenhagen Business School). Documenting Dissonance: Everyday (Dis)Belonging of 1.5 generation undocumented youth.
Discussant: Dr. Thomas LaCroix (CNRS Research Fellow, MIGRINTER, University of Poitiers and Science Po, Paris)
Panel 2: 11am-12:30pm: Migration, Globalization, and Social Transformation
Josepha Milazzo (PhD student, Geography, Aix-Marseille Université (TELEMMe) ~ Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (GRM)). "To see a world in a grain of sand: Rescaling (global) villages and migrants".
Guillaume Ma Mung (Ph.D. Candidate in Geography, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre). Staging ethnic trade interactions and the construction of African places
in Château Rouge, Paris.
Ilka Vari-Lavoisier (PhD candidate in Sociology and Economics École Normale Supérieure and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University) From Social Conditions to Mechanisms of Vernacularization
Discussant: Dr. Peggy Levitt (Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College & Research Fellow, The Weatherhead Center and The Hauser Center, Harvard University)
Lunch: 12:30pm - 2pm
**Roundtable Discussions: 2pm-3:45pm
1. How Immigrants Impact their Homelands (Susan Eckstein, Professor of Sociology and International Relations, Boston University)
2. Global Humanitarianism and the Transnational Circulation of Children (Leslie Wang, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston)
3. Gender, Migration and Transnational Nation-Building (Cinzia Solari, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachussetts, Boston)
4. Emerging Themes in the French scholarship on Transnationalim (Thomas LaCroix, CNRS Research Fellow, MIGRINTER, University of Poitiers and Science Po, Paris)
5. Finding Work and Entrepreneurship in a Transnational Marketplace (Pawan Dhingra, Professor of Sociology, Tufts University)
** RSVP required. Roundtable abstracts and biographies for discussion leaders attached below.
Panel 3: 4pm-5:45pm: Rescaling Analytical Frameworks for Immigrant Integration
Erica Dobbs (PhD expected 2014, MIT Political Science). No se puede: Exploring the theoretical, political, and transnational limitations of the Justice for Janitors movement.
Eram Alam (PhD Candidate, History and Sociology of Science, U Penn). Turning “Third World” Foreign Medical Graduates (FMGs) into “First World” Physicians: Consequences of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Amandine Desille (PhD Student, Poitiers University & Tel Aviv University). Integration policies in Israeli local governments: is the ‘glocalization’ approach relevant?
Marie Mallet (Post-doctoral fellow, Harvard). Between Cooperation and Rivalries - Comparative Analysis of the Role of Urban Context in the Incorporation of Latino Immigrants
Discussant: Dr. Helen Marrow (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Tufts University)
6pm: Reception
Roundtable Descriptions and Faculty Biographies
Please Note: The objectives of roundtable discussions are to identify and analyze theoretical developments in Migration Studies in the U.S. and France, and to discuss how research by faculty leaders and graduate student participants are contributing to these innovations. Roundtable discussions will refer to pre-assigned readings. Please RSVP for roundtable discussions to Kathleen Sexsmith () by April 28. Please identify a second roundtable preference in the RSVP.
1. Roundtable One: How Immigrants Impact their Homelands
Susan Eckstein, Professor of Sociology and International Relations, Boston University
Roundtable Description: The roundtable will focus on immigrant impacts in their homelands, and the political, social, cultural, and economic dynamics in both the home and host country influencing their impact. Ideally, our discussion will consider far more than remittances, including negative as well as positive impacts, macro as well as micro, and unintended as well as intended impacts.
Susan Eckstein is Director of Latin American Studies and Professor of International Relations and Sociology at Boston University. Dr. Eckstein’s main research focus is on Latin America and she has written extensively on Mexico, Cuba, and Bolivia and is currently focusing on immigration and its impact across borders. Eckstein is the author of four books, most recently, The Immigrant Divide: How Cuban Americans Changed the U.S. and Their Homeland, which was awarded the American Political Science Association Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP) Award for Best 2009 Book on Race, Ethnicity, Political Participation and Public Opinion and the American Sociological Association Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Award for Best Book in 2011. Previous books, Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro and The Poverty of Revolution: The State and Urban Poor in Mexico, also won scholarly prizes. In addition, Eckstein has edited several books, on social movements, social justice, and social rights in Latin America and, most recently How Immigrants Impact Their Homelands. Two of her books have been published in Spanish, In addition, she has authored dozens of articles. She has held grants and fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for World Order, a Mellon-MIT grant, the Ford Foundation, and the Tinker Foundation. She has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals and press editorial boards and served as President of the Latin American Studies Association and the New England Council on Latin America.
2. Roundtable Two: Global Humanitarianism and the Transnational Circulation of Children
Leslie Wang, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Roundtable Description: My research uses qualitative methods and a gendered perspective to investigate increasing transnational ties between China and the global north. Through grounded, nuanced examination of individual lived experiences, my work seeks to illuminate broader political and socio-economic shifts occurring on local, national, and global scales. Currently I am working on a book manuscript based on an ethnographic study of children’s lives in Chinese state-run orphanages that had partnerships with Western humanitarian non-governmental organizations. By examining the circulation of children between families, institutions, and across national borders, my research investigates the changing boundaries of citizenship in a globalizing era.
Leslie Wang's research centers on transnational issues of gender and family that connect mainland China with the industrialized world. Currently she is working on a book manuscript titled "Remaking Children: Orphanage Care and Humanitarianism in Globalizing China." The book provides an in-depth look at the care and welfare of abandoned youth residing on the margins of the world’s fastest growing economy. Drawing from a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork that she conducted with two international orphan aid organizations, it is the first systematic study of daily life in Chinese state-run orphanages. She examines the movement of certain children—primarily girls and special needs youth—between families, institutions, and nations, within the context of China’s rapid global economic rise and the country’s changing ideals of modern citizenship. By shedding light on one of the world’s least studied populations, her research provides unique insight into the human consequences of modernization in an increasingly globalized era.
3. Roundtable Three: Gender, Migration and Transnational Nation-Building
Cinzia Solari, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Roundtable Description: The increased number of migrants worldwide has been drastically increasing as has the annual flow of migrant remittances worldwide which were $2 billion in 1970 and $440 billion in 2010 (Oishi 2005:58; Ratha, Mohapatra, and Silwa 2011:19) Many sending states such as Mexico and the Philippines have celebrated their migrants as “heroes of the nation.” Global entities such as the World Bank, the International Organization for Migration, and NGOs have also jumped on the ‘remittances as development panacea’ bandwagon (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). For many sending states in the former Soviet Union, Asia, and the Global South, nation-building is now (or is once again) happening transnationally. The migration of women can pose particular challenges to sending states for several reasons: women are seen at the cultural bearers of the nation, women’s sexuality represents national morality and “ethnic purity”, and how a nation treats its women is constructed as an indication of whether a nation is “modern”. While some sending states celebrate their emigrants, others such as Ukraine and Bangladesh stigmatize them. In this roundtable we will explore the ways nations are constituted through gendered migration, investigate when and how gender becomes salient in transnational nation-building, and how the relationship between nations is made understandable in distinctly gendered terms.
Cinzia Solari received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at UMass Boston. Her book project, Exile vs. Exodus: Nationalism and Gendered Migration from Ukraine to Italy and California, is a global ethnography that examines the ways gender and post-Soviet economic transformation has produced the marginalization of middle-aged women, most grandmothers, who migrate abroad for work. These migration patterns in turn provide the structural and discursive basis for the production of the “new” Ukraine. Professor Solari’s work has been published in many venues such as Gender & Society, The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and The American Behavioral Scientist. Her publications examine the lives of Soviet peoples as they make their way in a post-Soviet world. Topics include state constructions of emigrants; the gendered work identities of immigrant domestic workers; the role of religious institutions in the settlement and transnational practices of migrants; and constructions of motherhood and nation in transnational migration.
4. Roundtable Four: Emerging Themes in the French Scholarship on Transnationalim
Thomas LaCroix, University of Poitiers and Science Po, Paris
Roundtable Description: The roundtable will overview current emerging themes on transnationalism in France. A particular focus will be given on three of them: transnational social institutions, e-diasporas and transnational governance.
Thomas Lacroix is CNRS research fellow at Migrinter, University of Poitiers. His research focuses on migrant organisations, immigrant transnationalism, integration and development. He teaches courses on Migration and Development at Science Po, Paris and is co-director of the master programme International Migration, Space and Societies at the University of Poitiers. He recently co-edited with Elena Fiddian Qasmiyeh the Special Issue: Diasporic and Refugee Memories at the Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2013.
5. Roundtable Five: Finding Work and Entrepreneurship in a Transnational Marketplace
Pawan Dhingra, Professor and Chair of Sociology, Tufts University
Roundtable Description: Immigrants migrate often for economic purposes. How they find jobs and specifically how they become entrepreneurs is a central concern to their well being. This roundtable will consider how immigrants draw from transnational networks in order to find work and start a business.
Pawan Dhingra is Professor and Chair of Sociology and of American Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of two award-winning books: Life Behind the Lobby: Indian American Motel Owners and the American Dream (Stanford University Press, 2012) which has been profiled in National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, Colorlines Magazine, and elsewhere; and Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities (Stanford University Press, 2007). He co-curated the now-open Smithsonian Institution exhibition, Beyond Bollywood: Asian Indian Americans Shape the Nation. His co-authored book, Asian America: Sociological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Polity Press 2014), was published in March.