LECTURES, READINGS, FILMS & PERFORMANCES

Lectures offered through the Barnard Forum on Migration are supported by a bequest establishing the Weiss International Fellowship Fund to bring distinguished scholars in literature and the arts to Barnard.

 

These events are free and open to the public.

For more information,
contact Kathryn McLean, kmclean@barnard.edu, 212.854.6146

 

» View past events

FALL 2009 EVENTS:

THE NEW REALITY OF MEXICO-U.S. MIGRATION
A lecture with Douglas S. Massey

09/15 TUESDAY 7:00 PM
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall

This talk examines recent changes in Mexican migration to the United States in light of recent developments in the U.S. economy and U.S. immigration enforcement. Key indicators include the probability of documented and ondocumented migration of return migration, apprehension, and the place and cost of border crossing. Shifts in the composition of Mexican immigration with respecct to age, gender and social class will also be considered. One of the world's most distinguished social scientists, Douglas S. Massey in the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and President of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He is the author of more than 200 articles and a score of books on migration, race, and ethnicity.

RENATIONALIZING MEMBERSHIP POLITICS
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University

10/01 THURSDAY 7:00 PM
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall

This is a peculiar time. We are seeing a renationalizing of immigration politics and a denationalizing of citizenship, and, more foundationally, of membership. Citizens are losing rights as a result of neoliberal policies and the War on Terror: such a loss of rights lengthens the distance between the state and the citizen. This raises a number of questions: among these is whether the loss of rights among citizens might become the ground for a politics of solidarity with immigrants, rather than a politics of antagonism as we see now. Emergent conditions feeding global civil society and transnational identities can further move citizens towards solidarity with "the outsider."

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and member of The Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and the most recent ones are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (2007). She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Huffington.com, among others.

WHO KILLED OSCAR WAO?
Migration Masculinity and Other Dominican Matters

10/14 WEDNESDAY 7:00 PM
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall

The eponymous hero of Junot Díaz’s award-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, moves, like many Dominicans, back and forth between the U.S., where his family made their new home, and the island nation they left behind. Maja Horn examines the implications of Oscar’s untimely death during one of these return trips and suggests how the incident speaks to changes brought about by migration in Dominican society as well as to the perpetuation of certain troublesome political and social patterns on the island. Maja Horn is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Cultures at Barnard College.

BASQUES IN CALIFORNIA: MIGRATION, FAMILY & GENDER
A lecture with Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga

11/18 WEDNESDAY 7:00 PM
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall

Join us on a 150-year journey that begins in the mighty Pyrenees and wends its way into such cities as Chino, Fresno, and Bakersfield, California. Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, who writes extensively on French Pyrenean migration to the New World, takes us from Basque country to “The Golden State,” and paints a valuable portrait of domestic and political power by examining how family structures, and women’s positions in them, changed (or failed to) in the wake of the great crossing. Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga is an Associate Professor at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, an Associate member of the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and presently a Fulbright Scholar in the United States.