Abstracts: January 15, 2009
The conference will explore the relationship between immigration and the changing cultural, political, and social landscape of the global North. The conference organizers seek papers that use thick descriptions and rigorous analyses of the dynamics of immigration, especially to re-examine some of the guiding assumptions and core propositions of modern social theory.We seek papers that relate to any of the following themes.
- Immigration enforcement, national security and the debate over civil liberties/ human rights (before or after 9/11)
- Re-theorizing immigrant integration and cultural pluralism
- Becoming Awhite@, Ablack@Y AAmerican@Yor not?
- The politics of racial/cultural assimilation and identity construction among immigrant populations
- Refugees, stateless peoples and the dynamics of marginality on the global stage
- Analyses of the legal discourse on immigrant/human rights and its consequences for paradigms of national sovereignty
- The impact of immigrant incarceration and deportation on immigrant communities
- Transnational migrant communities and ethnic diasporas
- The new immigration and the transformation of citizenship
- The racialization of new immigrant populations
- Patterns in social inequality/stratification that revolve around differences in legal status between immigrants, temporary workers, unauthorized migrants and citizens
- Immigration and new social movements
- Theorizing the nation, the border, and the meaning of Asecurity@
- Immigration and the social construction of gender, race, class and sexuality
- Immigration policy and strategies of governance: neoliberalism, popular nationalism and other variations
- The discursive construction of immigration as a Asocial problem@
- Immigrant labor markets and the global economy: centers and peripheries
The conference will feature both invited and submitted papers and presentations, as well as audiovisual materials. Please send a one-page abstract or proposals as email attachment (MS Word Format) to Jorge.Capetillo@umb.edu or Glenn.Jacobs@umb.edu by January 15, 2009. Upon selection and notification of approval by the organizing committee, submitters must send completed presentation paper manuscripts (around 12-15 pages, preferably double-spaced in Times 12 typeface) by March 15, 2008.
