Race, Ethnicity and Migration: Critical Perspectives from the Global North and Global South
I) The (re)appearance of race and ethnicity through the migration process with Michael Jones-Correa
These comments reflect on how race and ethnic differences appear and disappear as migrants move across borders, with relevant differences shifting from context to context, highlighted by state and social definitions and practices. While receiving states often treat race and ethnicity as immutable, for migrants as they move, these are contingent, not fixed, categories. The social construction of these categories, largely accepted by social scientists if not by states, has real consequences for migrants moving from one state to another. What implications can we draw from migrants' attempts to manage the processes of both migration and their racial/ethnic categorization?
II) Seeing “Race” through a Prism: Relational Socio-racial Hierarchies and Immigration with Feline Freier
In contrast to categorical concepts of race, race and ethnicity in much of Latin America is relative and conditioned by gender, education and class, much like light passing through a prism. At the same time, socio-racial differences in the region operate as a relational continuum, and blend into one another rather than presenting sharp categories. Furthermore, local socio-racial hierarchies differ with a view to the racial characteristics considered more or less inferior. In this talk I explore why a better theoretical understanding of Latin American socio-racial hierarchies is key to understanding the socio-political reception of different immigrant groups, including Venezuelan mass displacement across the region, and how this should make us rethink theories of race and immigration.
Read the associated blog post Seeing “Race” through a Prism: Relational Socio-racial Hierarchies and Immigration.
III) Dalits in America: Changing landscape of Caste, Geography and Dignity with Suraj Yengde
In the wake of caste discrimination litigation brought against the tech-giant CISCO corporation in the USA, the debate on caste and race has once again resurfaced. Scholars are divided over the analogy or juxtaposition of race with caste and vice versa. However, what remains undefeated is the existence of caste in the American landscape. The South Asian immigration to the United States after the relaxation of Immigration laws in the 1960s brought white collar workforce from the region. Overwhelming majority of this population came from the dominant caste fold who had acquired higher education in the feat of post-colonial nationalism. When they arrived in the US they brought with them the ritualistic practices which were soft codes for caste based sensibilities. These caste practices were neutralized by making it a 'Hindu cultural’ motif. Fast forward, at the dawn of twenty first century many assertive subordinate castes started entering the United State due to the educational reservation policy implemented in the 1990s in India. With this brought forth an historical unresolved tension of caste biases. This talk will cover the complex histories of the Dalits in America and what would it take for the American diversity regime to acknowledge the native diversities as opposed to the macro-Americanized identity based politics.
About the speakers:
Michael Jones-Correa is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Immigration (CSERI) at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a co-principal investigator of the 2006 Latino National Survey, the 2012 and 2016 Latino Immigrant National Election Study (LINES) and of research on immigrant/native-born contract, trust and civic engagement in Philadelphia and Atlanta, among other research. He has worked and published extensively on immigrant political mobilization, inter-group relations, and the integration of immigrants into receiving societies.
Feline Freier is Associate Professor of Political and Social Science at the Universidad del Pacífico (Lima, Peru). Her research focuses on migration and refugee policies and laws in Latin America, as well as south-south migration and the Venezuelan displacement crisis, with a special interest in the intersectionality of ethnicity, race, class and local socio-racial hierarchies. Prof. Freier has published widely in both academic and media outlets, and has been interviewed on the Venezuelan displacement crisis across international media. Prof. Freier has provided advice to various international institutions and organizations such as Amnesty International, ICRC, IDB, IOM, UNHCR, the World Bank and the EU.
Dr. Suraj Yengde is one of India's leading public intellectuals and a noted scholar of caste. He is the author of the bestseller Caste Matters and co-editor of award winning anthology The Radical in Ambedkar. Suraj is currently a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and an inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability (IARA) at Harvard University. Suraj is a published author in the field of caste, race, ethnicity studies, and inter-regional labor migration in the global south. Currently, he is involved in developing a critical theory of Dalit and Black Studies. Suraj is an academic activist and a noted public intellectual in the transnational movement of Dalit rights. He is actively involved in building solidarity between Dalit, Black, Roma, Indigenous, Buraku and Refugee people’s in the Fourth World project of marginalized peoples.
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