Immigration Events at UIUC
(To post an immigration event here, email kcmartin@uiuc.edu)

CAS (Center for Advanced Study) Initiative on Immigration - History and Policy The Center for Advanced Study (CAS) at the University of Illinois sponsors an annual interdisciplinary initiative to provide an opportunity for faculty and students to engage in a prolonged study on a topic of interest to a wide range of disciplines and methodologies across campus. The CAS Initiative for 2008-09 will be on Immigration: History and Policy, chaired by Jim Barrett, History, and Gale Summerfield, WGGP and Human and Community Development. It will bring together scholars in the social sciences, law, computer science, engineering and humanities to explore new approaches to immigration and its controversies.
Events being held as part of the CAS Initiative on Immigration are detailed at the Center for Advanced Study's website and below:

Fall 2008

Coming September 11, 2008:
Alejandro Portes

Professor of Sociology and
Director, Center for Migration and Development,

Princeton University

Details forthcoming

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Coming October 7, 2008:
Nancy Foner

Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College
and the Graduate Center,

City University of New York

Details forthcoming

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Spring 2008 Events

Donna Gabaccia,
Professor of History and Director, Immigration History Research Center,
University of Minnesota,
Nations of Immigrants,
Thursday, March 6, 2008, 4:00 p.m.,
Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 South Gregory St., Urbana
Sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study, WGGP, Dept. of History and others.

Even as it again debates immigration restriction, the United States is almost alone worldwide in proclaiming itself a "nation of immigrants." Many Americans wrongly assume that immigrants had a uniquely important role in the making of America. In fact, many nations have depended on migration to build their populations and workforces. And even the United States did not embrace this label until quite recently. Why do other nations not view themselves as "nations of immigrants?" And what exactly is it that Americans celebrate with this assertion of uniqueness? By acknowledging the global nature of international migrations, we can not only answer such questions but begin to assess the choices that create "nations of immigrants" and differentiate them from other nations created from populations of mobile foreigners.

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Other Campus Events on Immigration

Conference Announcement:
South Korea's Education Exodus: Risks, Realities, and Challenges
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
March 27-28, 2008

South Korean “early study abroad” students – namely those young people who exit South Korea for study prior to college – are literally changing the face of Korean diasporic communities across the U.S. and other English-speaking nations. Early study abroad is a rapidly escalating market in South Korea: a $550 million industry in the first quarter of 2004, doubling the 2002 figures. Remarkably, a recent South Korean survey revealed that if given the opportunity, 1 out of 4 parents would like to emigrate for their children’s education. The conference will ask large questions about South Korea’s particular globalization embrace, cosmopolitan desires, and education system; and about the changing face and social reality of Korean America with the arrival of these new immigrants. In doing so, the conference will take up both the macro-level context and consequences and the U.S. realities of this growing “immigrant” population.
For more information:
Conference website
E-mail - aasp@uiuc.edu

Migration Studies Group, Planned Events, Spring 2008

January 30, Jim Barrett, Dept. of History
" Americanization from the Bottom, Up: Irish Americans and the Making of a Multi-Ethnic Urban Culture." Chapter four. Noon, 336 Lincoln HallMonday

Feb. 18, Coryn Shiflet, Dept. of Geography
International Graduate Students and their Spouses : Academic Migrants at the University, Noon, 336 Lincoln Hall

March 6: lunch with Donna Gabbaccia, Rudolph Vecoli Professor of History, University of Minnesota
If you are working on a topic related to Migration or Ethnic History, please rsvp me and join us for this workshop-lunch.11.30, IPS building

April 9: Noreen Sugrue, Women and Gender in Global Perspectives,International Migration of Healthcare Workers: preliminary findings, Noon, 326 Lincoln

April 22, Tobias Brinkmann, Harvard University and University of Southampton (UK) Jewish Studies.
Borderline Experiences: Reinterpreting the Jewish Mass Migration from Eastern? Europe, 1880-1930; Time and place tba.

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WGGP Research Projects on Migration and Immigraton

Globalization processes have led to rapid flows of people across borders as well as flows of financial capital and goods. The human security issues involved in these transnational linkages comprise a key area of WGGP research.

Globalization, Transnational Migration, and Gendered Care Work, a symposium in Globalizations, September, 2006, Volume 3, Number 3. [WGGP Symposium at UIUC, 2004].

Gender and Human Security of Immigrants in the Midwest
This interdisciplinary project brings our work on gender and international development back to local issues. We are engaging with community groups and state legislators to examine policy-related issues facing immigrants and their host communities in the Midwest. Little attention has been given to gender aspects of human security issues in this area even though women comprise more than half of the recent immigrants to the U.S. and approximately half of immigrants from Latin America and Asia who are settling in the Midwest. We are conducting focus groups, doing a small survey, and symposia and seminars on this topic.

Symposium: Gender, Immigration, and Human Security in the Midwest MARCH 17-18, 2004

This symposium brought together academics, community activisits and state officials to address the gender and human security issues [health care, income security, housing, and education] confronting immigrants and their host communities in the Midwest.

Human Security of Immigrants in the Midwest

WGGP Perspectives Special Issue: Gender and Human Security: Latina/o Immigrants in the Midwest Highlighting proceedings of the Spring 2004 WGGP Symposium

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PAST IMMIGRATION EVENTS

Fall 2007 Events

Oct. 11, 4:00 p.m., A CAS/MillerComm Event: Douglas Massey, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University, "Understanding America's Immigration Crisis," Knight Auditorium, The Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory Street, Urbana.

Since 1986 the United States has employed a politics of contradiction in its relations with Mexico. With US encouragement, Mexico joined GATT in that year and embarked on a neoliberal economic project that opened its economy to trade, investments, and exchange, a project that was institutionalized by NAFTA, ratified by the United States, and fully enacted in 1994. Over the same period, however, the US has poured increasing resources into maintaining the illusion of a controlled border that is impervious to the flow of Mexican workers, even as it becomes more permeable with respect to capital, information, goods, commodities, and services. Douglas Massey will document the contradictory policy of growing integration and increasing separation and then trace out the costs of this self-deception for the inhabitants of both countries and the people who move between them.
This lecture is held in anticipation of the 2008-2009 CAS Initiative Immigration: History and Policy which will bring together scholars in the social sciences, law, computer science, engineering and humanities to explore new approaches to immigration and its controversies.

Hosted by: Department of History, Department of Human and Community Development, Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program
In conjunction with: African American Studies and Research Program, Center for African Studies, Center for Global Studies, Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, Children and Family Research Center, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Human and Community Development, Department of Geography, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, Global Crossroads Living and Learning Community, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, Institute of Communications Research, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, Latina/Latino Studies Program, Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security, Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Social Work, Spurlock Museum, Unit for Criticism and interpretive Theory

Oct. 19, 12:00 Noon, "Immigration and Human Security," Gale Summerfield, WGGP Director and Associate Professor, Human and Community Development, Latzer Hall, 1001 S. Wright Street, Champaign, sponsored by University YMCA Friday Forum and others.

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Spring 2007

January 31, Wednesday, Eliseo Medina, Vice President, Service Employees International Union, Washington, DC: "The New Immigrant Work force: Unions, Community and the American Dream," Levis Faculty Center, 3rd Floor, 919 West Illinois Street.

February 6, Tuesday, Jim Barrett, Professor, History, UIUC, "Global, Local, and Personal: Understanding the History of Immigration to the United States in the Twentieth Century," Comments by Augusto Espiritu, Associate Professor, History, UIUC, Levis Faculty Center, 919 West Illinois Street.

Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program and
Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society
Spring 2007 Immigration Brown Bag Series:

Monday, February 12 noon: Sylvia Puente University of Notre Dame
"Perspectives on Illinois Immigrant Integration Policies" Studio Room 1009, Doris Kelley Christopher Hall, 904 W. Nevada Street, Urbana

Monday, March 5 noon: Jorge Chapa
Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, UIUC
" Our Dysfunctional Immigration System at a Breaking Point"
Room 210, Illini Union, 1401 West Green Street, Urbana

Monday, April 2 noon: Geoffrey Hewings Urban and Regional Planning, Economics, UIUC
" Economic Advances of Immigration" Room 210, Illini Union, 1401 West Green Street, Urbana

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Fall 2006

Una O. Osili, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, "Institutions and Financial Development: Evidence from International Migrants in the U.S," August 29, 2006, 3:15-4:45, 343L Wohlers Hall Conference Room, sponsored by Economics, WGGP, and others.

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WGGP Symposium on Gender and Transnational Networks, Oct. 2002

Globalization is changing immigration patterns and networks around the world and presenting new challenges for public policies. Gaps remain in our knowledge about whether women and men play different roles or utilize different social networks in promoting security, creativity, and community involvement for their families. This symposium brought together specialists from different fields to explore gender issues of transnational networks in socio-politics, hybridity-identity, technology-popular culture, migration-mobility, and human security-economic policy.