Abstract: Have the policies and rhetoric of Trump's candidacy and administration undermined immigrants' trajectories of political inclusion? Drawing from original surveys of Latino immigrants spanning the period Trump won the Republican nomination, to when he was elected...
Speaker Bio: Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Studies. She writes on the migration of women from the Philippines with a focus on domestic work. She is the author of Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford...
The IIH has compiled a list of course offerings on immigration across Harvard's schools. Please cross-check with courses.havard.edu for further information and the most updated listings.
IIH staff members Jennifer Allsopp and Ariana Aparicio Aguilar joined the artists and producers of White Snake Productions for a panel discussion of the groundbreaking opera, I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams. If you couldn't join us on Thursday, the forum was recorded online.
IIH Executive Committee member Jacqueline Bhabha writes on the Supreme Court's DACA decision for the Financial Times:
"Since September 2017, the “Dreamers” who had benefited from Daca have been living on a knife’s edge."
"Thousands of the Daca-mented have suffered from crushing anxiety because of the insecurities associated with their status; some at Harvard have sought medical...
Gonzales explains: “Within a year, DACA beneficiaries were already taking giant steps. They found new jobs. They increased their earnings. They acquired driver’s licenses. And they began to build credit through opening bank accounts and...
Carr Center faculty and fellows discuss how we can employ principles of non-discrimination to address the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on our most vulnerable communities.
In our third Covid-19 Discussion Paper, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Jacqueline Bhabha; Technology and Human Rights Fellows Laurin Leonard and Teresa Hodge; and Carr Center Fellow, Laura Cordisco-Tsai, outline how Covid-19 disproportionately impacts the world's most vulnerable communities....
As an Asian-American, I’ve been conditioned to a certain kind of unspoken racism. This pandemic has unmasked how vicious it really is.
Early in February, I read unsupported speculations that a virus ravaging a distant city called Wuhan was due to a Chinese taste for a strange scaled mammal called the pangolin, which resembles an anteater but is cuddlier than its lumbering tube-snouted look-alike. Around that time, during a dinner party, I laughed when a friend quipped: “How...
Acts of physical violence, verbal intimidation, and hate-mongering against Chinese and other Asian Americans are occurring with alarming frequency throughout the country. Since the start of the medical crisis, more than one thousand acts of racism against Asian Americans...
A new report authored by the Harvard Law School Crimmigration Clinic reveals an accounting system across Massachusetts county sheriff offices that fails to fully and transparently account for costs incurred for providing federal agencies with immigration detention services.
The Immigration Initiative at Harvard (IIH) is recruiting a Research Assistant to work for up to 12 hours a week (hours to be confirmed depending on the successful candidate’s academic status), beginning 1 March 2020 for five months, with the possibility of extension. The candidate should have an existing Harvard affiliation. The main aims of the role will include facilitating the IIH team with the organization of events and administrative tasks related to a forthcoming conference on the topic of immigration. The Research Assistant will be expected to spend at least one day a week in the...
White Snake Projects, the team behind the acclaimed opera, I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams, is currently soliciting artists for the following projects: Let’s Celebrate! Living Holiday Traditions in America; and SING OUT STRONG: DeColonized Voices.
Ahead of the November 12, 2019 Supreme Court hearing regarding the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Immigration Initiative at Harvard (IIH) today releases a new report highlighting the program’s long-term impacts on young immigrants.
"Eager to seal a deal with El Salvador to curb a surge of migrants to the southwestern border, the Trump administration on Monday agreed to special legal protections that would allow an estimated 250,000 Salvadorans to stay and work in the United States for an additional year.
The announcement walks back an earlier decision to strip Temporary Protected Status in January from these Salvadoran immigrants, many of whom have resided lawfully in the United States for nearly two decades...
Professor Gerald Neuman, Co-Director of the Human Rights Program and J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School, recently filed an amicus curiae brief to...
New university-wide effort, launched with support from HGSE, aims to spur research, policy, and action on immigration.
"The Immigration Initiative at Harvard (IIH) — a new university-wide effort launched today — will bring together Harvard students, researchers, and policy leaders to advance innovative research about immigration. Led by Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Roberto Gonzales,...
Harvards EdCast interviews IIH Director Roberto Gonzales
Harvard Professor Roberto Gonzales thinks we need to better understand its implications and how it affects everyday life — not just for immigrant communities but for the country as a whole. In this episode, Gonzales discusses the immigration crisis in America and his new effort, the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, that connects researchers, policymakers, and immigrant communities...
Telling the untold stories: IIH staff member Ariana Aparicio Aguilar spoke with the Harvard Gazette on an event about the experiences of deportees and returnees.
"The panel — people who have researched the topic, worked in the field, or been personally affected — said that the experiences of returning from extended stays in the U.S. vary widely, with some finding fulfilling career and educational opportunities and others struggling to overcome significant cultural differences and even discrimination. They reflected that the experience for both the returnees and the families they left behind is difficult, but it does get easier."
“They could tell that I didn’t grow up there. My accent was different. My mannerisms were different. … I think that was the hardest part, realizing that I was not Mexican enough and not American because I lack this piece of paper.” - Ariana Aparicio Aguilar
IIH Director Roberto Gonzales spoke with the Harvard Gazette on how high-achieving DACA recipients had help along the way from families and communities
“I found that the difference was, the high achievers could name three or more mentors,” Gonzales said at a community lecture and discussion at the Harvard Ed Portal in Allston. “Mentors who were there for them at crucial times in their lives.”
He encouraged audience members to think about what they can do, directly or indirectly, to help create a supportive environment for undocumented children and adolescents.
“If immigration reform is not going to happen this year, and people have urgent needs, who will it be to meet those needs?” he said. “We [community members] have the opportunity to pitch in.”
"Finding my voice as a public scholar didn't happen overnight"
"I am now at the stage of my career where I am comfortable being a public scholar. I have been very fortunate to find diverse outlets for my work, and my research has provided me an evidence base that is sought after by a varied group of national and local actors—policymakers, community and school leaders, and practitioners. But in my early years in academia I struggled to find my voice as a public scholar."
"Prior to my academic career, I was a youth organizer in an immigrant community in Chicago. In that role, I lived in the neighborhood, and I was embedded in community life. That experience fundamentally shaped my political orientation."
New research from IIH Director Roberto Gonzales shows that immigrant students with DACA status experience smoother transitions to adulthood.
"Gonzales and his co-authors describe adolescence for undocumented immigrants as “a waking nightmare,” a time when young people realize that the goals they had thought possible are, in fact, out of their reach because of their immigration status. He described this uncomfortable awakening in his 2015 book, Lives in Limbo...
"At a workshop on immigrants’ rights held Monday morning at the Memorial Church, attorneys Jason Corral and Cindy Zapata of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program shared legal advice on how to deal with the more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration. Corral has provided legal services to at least 60 undocumented students studying at Harvard."
"The event was part of the DACA Seminar, a series of daylong events on campus to highlight, among other things, the future of the federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era initiative that protects young immigrants from deportation."
