The CLRC (now Huerta Center) was honored to be part of Non-citizenship, UC Santa Cruz’s 2016-17 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Culture. Linking citizenship, migration, border, labor, and carceral studies, and juxtaposing spatial and social mobility and immobility, this year-long series of events explored what it means to be a citizen and non-citizen in a world made by migrants, refugees, guest workers, permanent residents, asylum seekers, slaves, prisoners, detainees, the stateless, and denizens (residents who do not hold the same rights as citizens). Our seminar shed light on the tiered membership—what we call the spectrum of belonging—structuring societies in various places and periods and sharpens our understanding of the ways in which the mobility and regulation of non-citizens affect and transform notions of participation, belonging, and the social contract.  

Non-citizenship was organized around three themes: “Forced Migration” (fall 2016), “Labor Mobility and Precarity” (winter 2017), and “Fluidity of Status:  Migrants, Citizens, Denizens” (spring 2017). It was preceded by Borders and Belonging:  A Series of Events on Human Migration in the spring of 2016.  To learn more about events related to our Sawyer Seminar, please visit our Events page. 

Our Sawyer Seminar brought together an eclectic community of scholars working on and in various regions of the world and supports the work of Dr. Emily Mitchell-Eaton, our Postdoctoral Scholar, and Claudia Lopez and Tsering Wangmo, PhD candidates in Sociology and Literature respectively at UC Santa Cruz.  To learn more about the superb scholars associated with Non-citizenship, please visit our Participants page.   

Non-citizenship was a collaborative effort of the CLRC, Institute for Humanities Research, Division of Social Sciences, Division of Graduate Studies, Office of Research, and Latin American and Latino Studies Department. 

Participants

Resources & Media

UCSC’s 3 Mellon Fellows on Their Research & Plans for the Future: During the final, public event of our 2016-17 Sawyer Seminar, which took place at UC Santa Cruz on Friday, May 19, 2017, Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar Dr. Emily Mitchell-Eaton and Mellon Graduate Fellows Claudia Lopez and Tsering Wangmo presented their research and shared their plans for further developing their projects on migration, mobility, citizenship, and exile.  Dr. Mitchell-Eaton presented “Geographies of Imperial Citizenship.” Claudia Lopez’s paper was called “The Life Cycle of Forced Migration: The Partial Citizenship of Internally Displaced Peasants in Medellín, Colombia.” And Tsering Wangmo presented “From the Margins of Exile: Democracy and Dissent within the Tibetan Diaspora.”

Claudia Lopez and Sylvanna Falcón on KZSC: Mellon graduate fellow Claudia Lopez joined Non-citizenship co-Principal Investigator Sylvanna Falcón on Voces Críticas/Critical Voices on KZSC 88.1FM on May 16, 2017.  In her interview, Claudia discusses her research on the internal displacement and partial citizenship of peasants in Medellín, Colombia. She also speaks about how her dissertation, “The Life-Cycle of Forced Migration: The Lives and Politics of Rural Internally Displaced Persons in Medellín, Colombia,” engages with the three fields of migration, development, and urban studies to examine integration and citizenship.

Two public talks on issues of citizenship and deportation: On April 18, 2017, in two Ted-style talks, Tanya Golash-Boza (UC Merced) and Rhacel Parreñas (University of Southern California) help close UC Santa Cruz’s Andrew W. Mellon John E. Sawyer Seminar on non-citizenship by discussing what they see as some of the key issues framing debates around migration in our time: gender, deportation, incarceration, slavery, human trafficking, structural violence, and global apartheid. Q&A moderated by Felicity Amaya Schaeffer (UC Santa Cruz).

Tanya Golash-Boza on KZSC 88.1FM: In her April 18th, 2017, interview on KZSC’s Voces Críticas/Critical Voices, Tanya Golash-Boza, Professor of Sociology at UC Merced, discusses her latest award-winning book, Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism (New York University Press, 2016), with Sawyer Seminar co-Principal Investigator and Voces Críticas host Sylvanna Falcón.

Sawyer Seminar co-PIs Catherine Ramírez and Sylvanna Falcón reflect on the events of the past year and the meanings of “citizen” and “non-citizen” during the Trump presidency: On April 11, 2017, CLRC director and Non-citizenship Principal Investigator, Catherine Ramírez, spoke with Sylvanna Falcón on KZSC’s Voces Critícas about the April 18th Sawyer Seminar event with Tanya Golash-Boza and Rhacel Parreñas at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.  They also discussed the meanings of “citizen” and “non-citizen,” what it means to ponder these terms in 2017, and the urgency of recognizing and protecting human dignity, irrespective of citizenship status.  Listen to the interview.  

Tsering Wangmo and Sylvanna Falcón’s Conversation: On February 28, 2017, Mellon graduate fellow Tsering Wangmo joined Non-citizenship co-Principal Investigator Sylvanna Falcón on Voces Críticas/Critical Voices on KZSC 88.1FM. In her interview, Tsering discusses her book Coming Home to Tibet: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Belonging (Penguin India, 2014). Tsering grew up in Tibetan communities in Dharamsala, India, and Kathmandu, Nepal. Before enrolling in the doctoral program in Literature at UC Santa Cruz, she earned a BA and an MA from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi, an MA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. In addition to being an accomplished poet and writer, she’s a scholar of Tibetan nationalism, diaspora, and non-citizenship. Her dissertation, “From the Margins of Exile: Democracy and Dissent within the Tibetan Diaspora,” juxtaposes the external struggle for international recognition of the Tibetan government-in-exile with the internal struggle to command Tibetan unity since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950. 

Juan C. Dávila’s Interview with Guy Standing: Juan C. Dávila, a journalist, documentary filmmaker, CLRC Graduate Student Researcher, and doctoral student in Latin American and Latino Studies, interviewed Guy Standing of the School of Oriental and African Studies on February 6, 2017, at UC Santa Cruz. Juan’s work focuses on environmentalism and student movements. He has directed two feature documentary films, Compañeros de lucha (2012) and Vieques: una batalla inconclusa (2016), and currently works as a correspondent for Democracy Now! Since releasing The Stand-By Generation (2016), a short documentary about job insecurity in Puerto Rico, he has been documenting the struggles of the millennial generation as its members enter the labor force. Professor Standing’s concept of the precariat has become a significant pillar in the development of Juan’s work.

Guy Standing: “The Precariat: The New Denizens”: Guy Standing of the School of Oriental and African Studies opened the symposium, Labor Mobility and Precarity on a Global Scale, with a rousing talk on labor, precarity, and denizenship on February 7, 2017, at UC Santa Cruz.

Alejandro Grimson: “The Waste Product of Globalization’s Party”: Alejandro Grimson of Universidad Nacional de San Martín contributed to our discussion at Labor Mobility and Precarity on a Global Scale, our February 7, 2017, symposium at UC Santa Cruz, by turning our attention to Argentina and South America with his paper “The Waste Product of Globalization’s Party.”

Biao Xiang: “The Other Precariat: Notes from Asia”: Biao Xiang of the University of Oxford helped close our February 7, 2017, symposium, Labor Mobility and Precarity on a Global Scale, with “The Other Precariat: Notes from Asia.”

Emily Mitchell-Eaton on KUAF & KZSC: On November 14, 2016, Emily Mitchell-Eaton, the CLRC’s Mellon Post-doctoral fellow, spoke on Northwest Arkansas’ NPR affiliate station, KUAF, about her research on Pacific Islander migration and US militarism in the Pacific. She also delivered a talk at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, Arkansas, and was featured in “Arkansas’ Revolving Door” in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.Then, on February 21, 2017, Dr. Mitchell-Eaton was featured on Voces Críticas/Critical Voices on UC Santa Cruz’s own KZSC 88.1FM. In her interview, she discusses her research on Marshallese migration to Arkansas, as well as citizenship, militarism, migration, settlement patterns, and concerns about rising xenophobia in the United States.  

Philip Misevich and Konrad Tuchscherer on KZSC’s Artists on Art: On October 26, 2016, Sylvanna Falcón, Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, interviewed historians and filmmakers Philip Misevich and Konrad Tuchscherer of St. John’s University on KZSC 88.1FM’s Artists on Art.  In their interview, Professors Misevich and Tuchscherer talk about their research and some of the efforts it took to produce the film Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels.

Ghosts of Amistad: Inspired by Marcus Rediker’s celebrated The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (Penguin, 2012), Tony Buba’s 2014 documentary, Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels, chronicles Marcus Rediker, Philip Misevich, and Konrad Tuchscherer’s trip to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the people who seized the slave schooner Amistad in 1839, to interview elders about local memory of the case, and to search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began. In addition to narrating history from below, Ghosts of Amistad enacts and exemplifies the power and importance of scholarship to transform our understandings of the past and present.  

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Citizenship and the Politics of Exclusion: In her keynote address, Professor Anderson explores citizenship as both a legal status and moral claim. She examines what attention to debates about migration has exposed about the nature of the “good citizen” and the rise of the worker citizen. Rather than seeing migrants and citizens as competitors for the privileges of membership, she argues for the importance of politics that are attentive to the connections between the non-citizen migrant and the “failed citizen” on welfare or with a criminal record.

Bridget Anderson on KZSC’s Artists on Art: On October 5, 2016, Sylvanna Falcón, Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, interviewed Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration and Citizenship and Deputy Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford, on KZSC 88.1FM’s Artists on Art.  In her interview, Professor Anderson speaks about her personal history and its influence on her work on migration, citizenship, mobility, and exclusion. 

The CLRC and IHR on KZSC 88.1FM: On September 28, 2016, Institute for Humanities Research Managing Director Irena Polic, CLRC director Catherine Ramírez, and Andew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar Emily Mitchell-Eaton spoke with Nada Miljkovic about Non-citizenship and Bridget Anderson’s upcoming inaugural keynote address, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Citizenship and the Politics of Exclusion,” on Artists on Art on KZSC 88.1FM.  Click the photo to the left to hear their intervew podcast. 

Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control, by Bridget Anderson: Bridget Anderson’s lucid and compelling study of mobility explores the distinction between migrant and citizen by focusing on “the community of value.”  Not only “good citizens” comprise the community of value, Professor Anderson tells us; it is also defined from the outside by the non-citizen and from the inside by the “failed citizen,” such as the criminal, the teenage mother, and the so-called benefit scrounger–in short, anyone deemed to be a burden to society.  By juxtaposing good citizens, failed citizens, and non-citizens, Professor Anderson brings into relief the boundaries of community and the roles its various members play in maintaining and challenging them.  

Read more about Professor Anderson’s thoughts on mobility, migration, and citizenship and her October 6, 2016 keynote address at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in Good Times.

Rethinking Migration Conference Video

Keynote: Serial Labor Migration: Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California, presented “Serial Labor Migration:  Exclusion and Domestic Worker Patterns of Temporary Labor Migration,” the opening keynote at the conference, Rethinking Migration, at the Merrill Cultural Center at UC Santa Cruz on May 6, 2016. Catherine Ramírez, CLRC director and Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz, greeted attendees and introduced Professor Parreñas.  Rethinking Migration culminated Borders and Belonging, a series of events on human migration that the CLRC mounted in the spring of 2016, and helped lead up to Non-citizenship, our 2016-17 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar.

Panel 1: Labor and Precarity: In this first panel on May 6, 2016, Shannon Gleeson of Cornell University and Marcel Paret of the University of Utah co-presented “Precarity and Agency through a Migration Lens.”  Sarah Swider of Wayne State University shared her paper “Employment Configurations: A Spatial Analysis of Precarious Labor.”  And Steve McKay from UC Santa Cruz presented “Agents of Precarity:  Intermediaries, Institutions and the Vulnerable Lives of Migrant Workers.”  Veronica Terriquez, Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, moderated.

Panel 2: (Il)legality and (In)security: In this second panel, Lisa Marie Cacho of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, presented “De Facto Status Crime: Legitimizing Violence, Legalizing Discrimination.”  Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz, presented “Remote Identification:  Criminalizing the ‘Hidden Intent’ of Migrant Embodiment.”  And Susan. B. Coutin from UC Irvine presented on “Deferral,” a key and emerging term in the study of migration.  Professor Gabriela Arredondo of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz moderated.

Panel 3: Detention, Deportation, Asylum: In this third panel, Leisy Abrego from UCLA presented “Central American Women and Girls:  A Gendered View of Forced Migration.”  Rachel Lewis from George Mason University shared her paper “Precarious Temporality: Neoliberalism, Sexual Citizenship, and the Global Deportation Regime.”  Daniel Kanstroom from Boston College Law School wrapped up the evening with “The Forgotten Deported:  Towards Better Understanding and a Declaration of Rights.”  Professor Pat Zavella of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz moderated.

Keynote: Defending Migrancy: On the second day of the conference, May 7, 2016, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University, delivered the opening keynote, “Defending Migrancy:  In/against the Violent Orders of State Sovereignty and Transnational Capitalism,” at the Merrill Cultural Center.  The Chicano Latino Research Center’s director, Catherine Ramírez, welcomed attendees back, summarized the previous day’s proceedings, and introduced Professor Camacho.