Migrants Archives - Public Seminar

Migration

At the Border

Going into Poland’s forests to help migrants gave me a sense of peace but the journey is far from over

December 17, 2021 • by Pawel Knut and Franciszka Sady

Before leaving for Podlachia I naively assumed that my trip would have a beginning and an end, that I would gain a better understanding of the ongoing crisis and the role people such as myself could play in it. I seem to have reached some geographical and symbolic end. However, ...

Activism

The True Story of Two Guatemalan Asylum Seekers at Our Border

A saga of dispossession, past and present

April 15, 2021 • by Mónica Salmón Gómez

_____I met Francisco Chávez and Gaspar Cobo through a colleague and advocate for migrants’ and refugees’ human rights who works in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The two of them had fled Guatemala in June 2019. Travelling with a larger group of Central Americans going north, it took them twenty days to ...

The True Story of Two Guatemalan Asylum Seekers at Our Border

Migration

I am a Migrant

January 28, 2020 • by Mat Cusick

I moved for the first time with my family when I was three years old, for a typical reason often described as “economic opportunity.” This meant, in my father’s case, an editorial position at the newspaper in the city where he was born and raised -- what is known as ...

Migration

Remote Control of Asylum Seekers

How States Evade their Protection Obligation

December 17, 2019 • by David Scott FitzGerald

Zolberg observed that regulating migration at the port of embarkation abroad “is now so familiar that we tend to underestimate its radically innovative character and its fundamental importance in regulating world-wide movement.” In Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, I show how modern remote control has become a ...

Migration

The Epistemology of the Refugee: 30 Years after Zolberg

Introduction to the Zolberg Institute Special Issue

December 16, 2019 • by Daniel Calzadillas-Rodriguez

Zolberg, Suhrke, and Aguayo’s analysis is centered around the question who is recognized as a refugee -- still a contested issue in today’s public discourse, as people arriving at the southern U.S. border are alternatively categorized as “refugees” or “economic migrants.” Although the majority of migrants at the southern border ...

The Epistemology of the Refugee: 30 Years after Zolberg

Migration

Lockstitch Lives

Migrants in the Megacity

December 16, 2019 • by Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee

Yogesh is one of the people you meet in Lockstitch Lives – Migrants in the Megacity. This interactive documentary, produced by Society for Labour and Development and HELM Studio, transports you to the neighborhoods of Gurgaon, where you witness the rugged daily realities of scores of families like Yogesh’s. Using 360-degree multimedia, Virtual Reality, photography ...

Migration

Trump’s War on Asylum

November 13, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

In the summer of 2019, the Administration put in place a policy that denies asylum to any person who has traveled through another country and failed to request asylum in the transit state. It has announced a reduction of refugee admissions to 18,000, a more than 80% cut from the ...

Migration

In the Shadow of Auschwitz

Reflections on America’s Asylum Policies in the Age of Trump

October 25, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

This odd combination of events sparked a number of thoughts which I offer now after further reflection. I will not enter into the discussion of whether the detention facilities to which children have been confined in the U.S. are or are not similar to concentration camps; nor am I arguing ...

Migration

Corpus Nullius: How Europe Recast the Migrant Body

Narratives of the migrant-refugee crisis reflect the interests they serve

May 23, 2019 • by Siraj Izhar

After a record number of refugees arrived in Europe in 2015 following the Syrian collapse, Europe’s reaction provided the conditions for an even more fundamental change. As the fences went up at each boundary within a previously borderless Schengen Europe -- almost as an act of self-reproach following Angela Merkel’s acceptance ...

Corpus Nullius: How Europe Recast the Migrant Body

Education

University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

Indiana University instructs faculty to comply with all laws and regulations regarding foreign influences

January 14, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I just received the letter at bottom in a mass e-mailing to Indiana University faculty. It instructs faculty about the importance of complying with all laws and regulations regarding the disclosure of “foreign influences.” The sender, a high official of the University, is also a smart colleague who I respect. And ...

University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

Feature

Moral Blindness and Immigration in America

The Trump administration’s inhumane approach to immigration

July 12, 2018 • by Siobhan Kattago

Reactions to Donald Trump’s immigration policies -- whether in the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Muslim ban, rejection of domestic and gang violence as valid reasons for asylum or, more pointedly, the separation of families seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border, have primarily focused on the architects of such policies ...