The German Historical Institute issued a call for papers for the  annual academic and policy symposium, “Contested Meanings of Migration Facilitation: Emigration Agents, Coyotes, and Human Traffickers.” The symposium will explore migration facilitation as situated between securing borders, solidarity networks, and economic interests or needs. It brings together Germany-based professionals from the academic, cultural, activist, and policy sectors as well as colleagues the United States working in similar contexts. In order to address the complexities and contingencies of migration facilitation, the symposium seeks to make comparisons across time and space since the nineteenth century. To do this, they welcome proposals from a wide range of disciplines, including history, ethnic studies, migration studies, political science, sociology, and law.

The University of Southern California (USC) Program for Environmental and Regional Equity brings together the voices of an immigration activist, a Clinical Emergency Medicine faculty member, and an artist that has dedicated her life to dignity and justice for all Black Lives to share rich, data-driven stories of their experiences with migrant and incarcerated communities. Panelists will look at transformative alliances of social movements and the role that politics, economics, and culture play in rebuilding our ecosystem. Their hope is to create a dialogue among students, faculty, staff, and community-based organizations to look at the intersections of race, class, gender, and economics in our work.

The Center for Migration Studies of New York has compiled a page on its website that summarizes the US and global COVID-19 migration-related developments. This page includes policy developments, CMS policy analysis, research, and dispatches about the coronavirus. As the pandemic develops, this page will be updated.

The American Review of Public Administration, a leading SSCI journal in the field, is calling for commentaries on the relationships between the practice of public administration and the field of public health in the context of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. 

In particular, and on a comparative basis in terms of country level responses in China, South Korea and throughout the world, we are interested in hosting a practitioner-academic dialogue that addresses significant lessons going forward:

• Have tensions between political leaders and administrative professionals limited the efficacy of public health initiatives?
• Have strategic planning and management systems proven adequate to address this pandemic? What are the elements of such processes that must be improved to avert future crises?
• To what extent is the response to the crisis driven by evidence-based decisions? Or are factors such as political priorities, idiosyncratic beliefs and feelings of being invulnerable effectively conflicting with science-based approaches?
• Are too few public servants willing to “speak truth to power” in terms of their messaging to the public? To what extent has the bureaucracy evidenced leadership in the crisis? 
• Are government’s budgeting and fiscal management systems flexible enough for the short-term responses necessary in a pandemic situation?
• Have capacity-building and service-delivery performance measures been evident in planning for such an epidemic? Would a broader range of measures, and the data necessary to populate them, have been advantageous?
• Were public organizations adequately and comprehensively modeling the necessary plans, supply chains and resources for a pandemic? Were they sufficiently and safely staffed at the federal, state and municipal levels for such a disaster response?
• Are we facing a federalism crisis?  If the federal government fails to come to the aid of states and localities during a pandemic, for which state and local governments do not have the resources to respond effectively, has the American President and the executive branch he leads abandoned its constitutional and moral obligations to the citizenry?
• Any other issues of similar relevance.

Please submit manuscripts of no more that 5000 words as early as possible, but no later than May 15th. Co-authoring is encouraged, including academic-practitioner partners. Authors are encouraged to reflect on and draw upon their experiences during the Coronavirus epidemic and over the course of their careers. They are encouraged to draw upon relevant literature, with appropriate citations. All manuscripts will be reviewed on an expedited basis. We expect to publish this dialogue as soon as June.

Manuscripts should be submitted directly to Stephanie Newbold at stephanie.newbold@hotmail.com

Questions and intentions as to appropriate topics should be addressed to us:

Stephanie Newbold

Rutgers University

Co-Editor

stephanienewbold@hotmail.com

Marc Holzer

Suffolk University

Co-Editor

Marcholzer1@gmail.com

When the Rivers Run Backwards: Field studies and statistical analyses of an indigenous social movement in northern Coclé province, Republic of Panama, in the face of a planned Panama Canal expansion

Nina Müller-Schwarze

Temporary Part-time Lecturer, University of Washington; Precarity; Senior Research Fellow, Southern Food and Beverage Museum, New Orleans.

Abstract

The social movement Coordinadora Campesina Contra Los Embalses (CCCE) successfully stopped a planned Panama Canal expansion.  This presentation will describe the quantitative research in my dissertation, which depicts in a factor analysis this social movement at the height of the threat of flooded ancestral land.  This work shows how factor analysis is an excellent methodology for grounded research in sociocultural anthropology and addresses key theoretical ideas in sociocultural anthropology through quantitative methods.  Knowledge co-production through a collaborative probe in my previous Peace Corps host community informed teamwork and data collection over eight months in 55 communities in the Indio River watershed.  Quantitative research methods revealed aspects of the social movement that the vaguely defined mainstay of cultural anthropology’s methodology, “participant observation,” could not have.  The methodology of factor analysis further facilitated knowledge co-production regarding statistical results.

Grounded quantitative research led to grounded qualitative theory, which revealed this social movement as indigenous and Catholic, and showed the historical continuity of an indigenous political structure.  The state political structure exists in linear time and the indigenous political structure is flexible and exists in cyclical time.  My published book qualitatively supports the grounded theory and documents the connection and disjuncture between the two social structures over time with archival research, describes the indigenous women’s movement Frente Femenina associated with the CCCE, and addresses postmodern writing concerns about ethnographic authority in its use of cyclical time.  Additional statistical analyses about identification practices and definitions of the discursive field, “poverty,” are described in the dissertation and book.

The threat of flooding and deterritorialization is a theme throughout this work.  I will tell the story of a rural social movement and the context in which I produced this knowledge; Hurricane Katrina disrupted my career trajectory and I am returning in a new cycle to this work.

Note: Throughout the Spring 2020 quarter, the CSSS Seminar Series will be conducted online via Zoom. Interested participants can join us at the following password-protected link.

Link:https://washington.zoom.us/j/389714634?pwd=eFhtUTlMNnpybkdpbU8wSThrdWlPZz09 

Password: CSSS.NMS

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed serious structural weaknesses in the nation’s health care and economic infrastructure. This crisis also reveals how the lives of all community members, immigrants and citizens, are interconnected.

Congress is taking steps to mitigate the harm of the coronavirus pandemic.  Unfortunately, the COVID-19 relief bills didn’t go far enough, and failed to cover many immigrants. For example, the recovery rebate in the stimulus bill was not made available to taxpayers who filed with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). Nevertheless, state and local advocates are engaged in incredible work to fill in some of the gaps left by the federal government. This includes advocacy to address issues of economic security & access to nutrition programs during these critical times.

In this webinar, our presenters will discuss what the new COVID-19 relief laws provide to immigrants, the gaps left by the federal government and what some state and local advocates and allies are doing to fill in these gaps.

This webinar will take place on Thursday, April 16 at 10am-11:30am PT/1-2:30pm ET

Presenters:

Avideh Moussavian, Legislative Director,  National Immigration Law Center

Jackie Vimo, Economic Justice Policy Analyst, National Immigration Law Center

Sara Cullinane, Director, Make the Road New Jersey

Gabriela Ibanez Guzman, Staff Attorney, Somos Un Pueblo Unido (New Mexico)

With millions of immigrant workers in essential jobs at the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical that all immigrants know their rights at work and have the information they need to ensure their health, safety, and wellbeing during this unprecedented public health crisis.

In this webinar, our presenters will discuss several areas of workers’ rights as they relate to immigrant workers and the COVID-19 pandemic. These protections are covered in a new Know Your Rights resource co-authored by NILC, the National Employment Law Project, and the Occupational Safety and Health Law Project. This new resource, and this webinar, are designed to answer frequently asked questions from immigrant workers and their advocates related to COVID-19 in areas such as:

• Safety and Health on the Job

• Using Collective Action to Improve Workplace Safety and Health

• Paid and Unpaid Time Off from Work

• Unemployment Insurance

In addition, the presenters will discuss how changes in recent federal COVID-19 relief legislation impact immigrant workers in the areas of Paid Sick Leave, Paid Family Leave, and Unemployment Insurance.

This webinar will take place on Wednesday, April 15 at 1:30pm ET/12:30pm CT/ 11:30am MT/10:30am PT.

Presenters:

Emily Tulli, Senior Attorney, Occupational Safety and Health Law Project

Ingrid Nava, Associate General Counsel, SEIU Local 32BJ

Jessie Hahn, Labor and Employment Policy Attorney, National Immigration Law Center

Joanna Cuevas Ingram, Staff Attorney, National Immigration Law Center