citizenship

Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA

By

In Refusing Death, Nadia Y. Kim tells the stories of Asian and undocumented Latin@ immigrant women, finding that they are influential because of their ability to remap politics, community, and citizenship in the face of the country’s nativist racism and system of class injustice, defined not just by disproportionate environmental pollution but also by neglected schools, surveillance and deportation, and political marginalization.

Read more

2019 CUNY Conference on Citizenship, Belonging, and Identity in the Age of White Nationalism

By

Taking into account considerations of immigration, race, gender, and diaspora, AAARI’s 2019 annual conference asks: What does the meteoric rise of Trumpian racist white nationalism say about the nature of systemic racism in our country today? Why is it now primarily and explicitly rooted in anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim nativist racism, and where do Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) — their diverse ethnic groups — fit (or not fit) in these citizenship orders? How has the higher education research community and the activist community collaborated and how can they continue to strategically collaborate together?

Read more

Centering Nativist Racism: How Doing So Helps Us Grasp New Forms of Citizenship & Would’ve Predicted Trump

By

This talk will address how US racism pivots as much on nativist injustices – suffered mostly by Latinx, Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI), and Middle Eastern ethnics – as it does on injustices specific to Black Americans. Prof. Nadia Kim evidences the point by way of research on Latinx and AAPI immigrant activism, as well as an analysis of the rise of Donald Trump. Although sociology has certainly given a nod to nativistic racism, mostly in relation to the Latinx population, its core theories, frameworks, and methodologies have not centered “the citizenship line”; as such, it has not defined sociology the way the color line has. Yet, the racialized insider/outsider axis has long separated “us white Americans” from the brown brother, terrorist, war-time enemy, socioeconomic threat (e.g., academic threat), exotic seductress, anchor-baby maker, and maternity tourist. As this list of representations reveals, gender, class, and the body are also interrelated with race, and all are vital to the remaking of citizenship by the mostly Mexican and Filipin@ immigrant activists whom Prof. Kim studies in Los Angeles. Not only would a citizenship-centered sociology best grasp their efforts and the implications thereof, but, in my view, would have also predicted the arrival of the Trump era, the other focus of her talk.

Read more

“We’re the New Citizenship”: LA’s Asian and Latin@ Immigrant Activists on Politics as Embodied and Emotional

By

In recent decades under runaway neoliberalism, “foreignized” and unauthorized immigrants have increasingly made political inroads by way of grassroots community activism and by sidestepping the need for formal political channels and, at times, even dismissing them. By way of nearly four years of ethnographic observation, 49 in-depth interviews, and extensive document analysis, Prof. Nadia Kim … Read more

Citizenship and Immigration Issues

By

Prof. Allan Wernick will introduce the CUNY Citizenship and Immigration Project, and its mission to provide free, high quality, and confidential citizenship and immigration law services to help immigrants on their path to U.S. citizenship. To achieve this goal, the Project’s immigration attorneys and paralegals offer one-on-one consultations to assess participants’ eligibility for legal benefits … Read more