immigration seminar series

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

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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.

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The Border Within: Vietnamese Migrants Transforming Ethnic Nationalism in Berlin

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“The Border Within” paints a vivid portrait of these disparate Vietnamese migrants’ encounters with each other in the post-socialist city of Berlin. This book uncovers how 20th-century state formation and international migration—together, border crossings—generate enduring migrant classifications. In doing so, border crossings fracture shared ethnic, national, and religious identities in enduring ways.

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The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

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Drawing on ten years of research across five continents, prize-winning historian Mae Ngai narrates the story of the thousands of Chinese who left their homeland in pursuit of gold, and how they formed communities and organizations to help navigate their perilous new world. Out of their encounters with whites, and the emigrants’ assertion of autonomy and humanity, arose the pernicious western myth of the “coolie” laborer, a racist stereotype used to drive anti-Chinese sentiment.

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