Anthropology of the Immigrant Life Course Research Program Brown Bag Speaker Series

Immigration is admittedly an interdisciplinary field of study.  Different disciplines bring their own perspective and lens to understand the field and explore public issues.  What is the special contribution of anthropology to this interdisciplinary field?  The Anthropology of the Immigrant Life Course Research Program, in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland, invites discussion of the anthropological contributions to the interdisciplinary field of migration studies as they intersect with scholarship and policy.

The speaker series will start a conversation with anthropologists of migration studies whose scholarship and practice is located in the DC Metropolitan region. The format is informal and geared towards engaging attendees in dialogue.  Dr. Freidenberg will introduce the speakers; ask them to talk about their current work and to help us reflect on the interdisciplinary field from their perspective and practice as trained anthropologists.

 

TIME AND PLACE:  Wednesdays 12:30-2pm in 1102 Woods Hall

DATES AND SPEAKERS:

 

April 2, 2014:  Martin Ford, Associate Director, Maryland Office for Refugees and Asylees, Department of Human Resources, Maryland

 

How Domestic Refugee Resettlement worksRefugee Resettlement and American Immigration as Seen by an Erstwhile Anthropologist

 

Martin Ford will take us to the world of practice. Trained as an anthropologist, he has been employed for more than 20 years in administering government programs for refugees and asylees.  While his anthropological training led to his first job, directing a state commission on ethnicity, he is now involved with policy and programmatic aspects of immigrant integration. Although his work is far removed from that of the ethnographer or teacher, anthropology continues to inform how he thinks.  

 

Dr. Ford will speak to us about refugee resettlement as part of the broader American immigration system. He will help us reflect on immigration as a contentious topic, with those who take sides in the debate basing opinion more on feelings than facts. Ford will discuss how an evidence-based analysis of contemporary immigration may yield more accurate views.  He will recall his training in anthropology, which emphasized thinking like a social scientist (testing hypotheses, respecting evidence, using a comparative perspective, etc.), and how such critical thinking, has bolstered his work in refugee resettlement.

 

Dr. Ford will also discuss current job opportunities in resettlement work, how the US Refugee Resettlement Program works, and how students might become involved as interns or volunteers.  

 

 

May 1, 2014:  Dennise Brennan, Associate Professor and Chair, Georgetown University

 

Life Interrupted:  Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States

 

Drawing on her new book with Duke University Press with the same title, Dr. Brennan will discuss how survivors of human trafficking struggle to get by and make homes for themselves in the US.  She will discuss her long-term ethnographic research on low wage sectors in the US economy – such as fields, factories, and construction – are sites that conceal forced labor.

Dr. Brennan will help us dispel the myth that only sex workers are trafficked, and refer to her previous work on sex tourism in the Dominican Republic.  She will help us reflect on why anthropological evidence is not taken as much into account by policy makers as legal evidence.

  

Published on Thu, 01/16/2014 - 11:29