PLACA Seminar and Speaker Series
PLACA's Graduate Seminar and Speaker Series offers intertwined perspectives on an annual theme. Recent seminars have focused on political participation, economic development, social policy, and poverty alleviation.
Spring 2010 Series
SOC700 Latin American Migration and Transnationalism
Professor Amy Lutz
This multidisciplinary course will examine issues related to Latin American migration to North America, Europe and Asia, and the transnational relationships that link migrants with people in both their sending and receiving communities. In particular, we will look at case studies of migrants from Mexico, Central America, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. We will also discuss how immigration and refugee policies, international trade agreements, foreign policy, and domestic political and economic conditions shape the context of migration in both sending and receiving societies as well s how emigration impacts the countries of origin and how migration varies across the region. The course is integrated with the PLACA speaker series and the annual PLACA conference (cosponsored with Cornell University) and through the speaker series and conference, students will have the opportunity to meet with some of the authors from the course and talk about their work.
Featured speakers will include (click here for more information):
*Alfredo Lopez (Physician and former migrant worker) who will speak about the lives and health issues of migrant farmworker. February 24, Eggers 341, 4pm.
*Maria Cristina Garcia (Professor of History at Cornell University) who will speak about her research on Central American refugees in Mexico, the US, and Canada. March 2, Eggers 341, 4pm.
*Jorge Durand (Professor of Anthropology at the Universidad de Guadalajara), who is the codirector of the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project (focused on migration from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Colombia, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic), and who will speak about the findings from these large-scale research projects on Latin American migration. April 12, Eggers 220, 12:45pm.
*Robert Courtney Smith (Professor of Sociology at Baruch College and CUNY Graduate Center) who will speak about the transnational lives of Mexicans in New York. April 21, Eggers 341, 4pm.