Immigration and Democracy

Not only is immigration a main stake in the forthcoming U.S. election, it is predicted that this year will see unprecedented numbers of immigrant voters. So, what does that look like? We wrap up this season of Immigration & Democracy with perhaps the killer question: what is the importance of the immigrant vote in U.S. politics – how has it shaped trends historically, and what will it mean for this year on November 3rd? We are joined by Matt A. Barreto, Professor of Political Science and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA and the co-founder of the research and polling firm Latino Decisions, and Janelle Wong, Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and Co-Principal Investigator on the 2016 National Asian American Survey. Together they work on the Collaborative Multi-racial Post-Election Survey. In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.

Can fashion help us make a better world for our children? Today, we talk to Walé Oyéjidé. With clothes and prose, his work aims to reframe the lens through which migrants and asylum seekers are commonly seen in Western society, and to celebrate their lives and stories. Join us for a discussion that spans cultural appropriation versus appreciation, and creative resistance in the U.S. and global Black Lives Matter movement. In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.

Is Trumpism really a bolt from the blue, or is his hardline approach to immigration a continuation of majority-ethnic nationalism that goes back to settler colonialism? And, in their efforts to appease certain voters with more securitized immigration policies, to what extent did the administrations of Clinton, Bush and Obama pave the way? Join guest host Dr Stephanie DeGooyer in conversation with Daniel Denvir as they explore American nativism in the past and present. How is it shaping politics as we know it, and what are the lessons for the future of the immigrant’s rights movement? In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.

Deportation is when a country takes measures to remove a foreign national from its territory. It's something faced by criminal fugitives, but also by refugees fleeing persecution who are apprehended at the border, Dreamers studying at the nation’s best colleges, and probably some nice guys you’d run into at your local bodega. Today, we talk to a team of academics who are part of a new international research collaborative, Life Facing Deportation, about what we do and don’t know about forced returns in the U.S. and Central America. We start off the conversation with an unlikely story of detention and return. Santos explains why, real crime to him is not crossing a border without permission, but failing to respond to his family’s acute humanitarian need. If deportation serves as a way of marking the boundaries of belonging in nation states, is it possible to envision a democracy without deportation? In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.

The words immigrant activism and opera are seldom used together, but White Snake Projects is pioneering this cause. We talk to Cerise Lim Jacobs, Pulitzer Prize winning opera creator and librettist from the multicultural hub of Singapore whose latest opera, I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams, tackles head on issues of social justice and democracy, starting with immigration. Cerise also talks to composer and producer Xiren Wang about the particular challenges faced by the Asian American community in speaking out and being heard In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.

We know that more than 3,200 people have gone missing since the 1990's to the present day in the Sonora Desert, Arizona alone – but what does that mean? And how do you document atrocities happening to people who are, by the very nature of their plight, undocumented? In today’s conversation, we talk to archaeologist turned anthropologist Professor Jason De León, from UCLA, about what it looks like to cross a border, and what kind of traces people leave behind in the past and present. We also introduce you to a new global exhibition, Hostile Terrain 94. In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.

Today we talk to Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Undocumented Americans, and Marcelo Hernández Castillo, author of Children of the Land. Among other topics, we discuss what it is like growing up without papers, what it feels like to publish memoirs at a young age, and the intersection of memory, writing and taking care of ourselves. In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.

Today, we discuss immigration raids. We're joined by Dr William D. Lopez, from the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and Dr Nicole L. Novak, from the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Among other topics, we discuss new research published by the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, 'An Unnatural Disaster: The Impact of Immigration Raids on Latino Communities'. This is available to download in English and Spanish on our website. We also hear from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)and Brooklyn Defender Services, Know Your Rights Campaign. In this series, we bring you fresh knowledge and insight from the team at the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, led by our Director, Professor Roberto G. Gonzales, and featuring voices from the field. Join us as we get to know our neighbors through their stories. This podcast is hosted by Dr Jennifer Allsopp and produced by Xiren Wang and Dr Jennifer Allsopp.