Immigration in Spain and the Pioneer Valley

The Republican newspaper has a great article in today's paper in which Jim Ayres (of Center for New Americans) is interviewed. Among other topics, "Immigration bill a lost opportunity" details some of the ways stalled Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) has affected communities in Northampton/Amherst, Holyoke and Springfield.

If you are interested in volunteering a couple of hours a week as an English tutor for adult immigrants in the area, visit the Center for New Americans or The International Language Institute.

Good Neighbor Fund

The Sprinfield-based Alliance to Develop Power is holding their Good Neighbor Fund Kick-Off in Amherst on Tuesday, January 29th. For more information, click here.

What is Detention?

News articles rarely follow-up on what happens to immigrants once they are in detention. Unfortunately, this lack of information encourages the neglect, mistreatment and abuse of immigrants in detention facilities. The Detention Watch Network monitors these stories and fights for reform of the United States detention and deportation system. From their website:

Immigrants in detention include families, both undocumented and documented immigrants, many who have been in the US for years and are now facing exile, survivors of torture, asylum seekers and other vulnerable groups including pregnant women, children, and individuals who are seriously ill without proper medication or care.

DWN has a Detention Center map, resources for those affected, and advocacy toolkit and action alerts.

Local Lectures

Five College Women's Studies Research Center
Spring 2008 Events

FCWSRC events are free and open to the public. No preregistration is required. Regular talks are held on Mondays and Thursdays from 4:00-5:30pm. Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at the Center at 83 College Street on the Mount Holyoke campus.
For more information, see www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/fcwsrc or tele 413-538-2275.

Thursday, April 3 at 4pm
Gyoung Sun Jang
Research Associate, Clark University
De/Gendering Sex Trafficking: Discursive Strategies in Transnational Anti-sex Trafficking Movements
Jang’s study probes discourses of anti-sex trafficking movements deployed in the course of shaping inter-state trafficking conventions from 1904 to 2000. She examines the discourses of ‘child prostitution’ and ‘public health’ as repeating themes in the history of these movements. Jang also discusses these discourses in relation to the modernization projects of both imperial and post-colonial states. In contrast to the currently polarized analyses of sex trafficking and prostitution in feminist scholarship, this position provides a new way to historicize transnational campaigns with a different set of analytical questions and frameworks.

Monday, April 7 at 4pm
Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez
Ford Associate, University of Manchester
Transnational Migration, Affective Labor and Precariousness: On Domestic and Care Workers' Rights
A wide range of research indicates that domestic and care work in private households is now the largest employment sector for migrant women entering the European Union (Anderson and Phizacklea 1997). Although the relationship between paid domestic and care workers and their employers tends to be widely acknowledged in social science literature, this relationship has rarely been explored in detail on the interpersonal level of transcultural encounters between employers and employees in private households. How do EU migration policies constrain the social mobility of migrant women? How does paid domestic and care work structure interpersonal relationships between those who pay for and those employed to do this work in private households?

The Immigrant Vote

Nuevo Mundo: Getting Visible
We all should value our voting privileges like this Mexican immigrant family.
By Natalia Muñoz (The Valley Advocate)

I know an 18-year-old who is the daughter of an undocumented Mexican. She is the GOP’s nightmare.

But for her mother, with whom I spoke about the upcoming Feb. 5 primaries, she embodies a dream that steadied her through nine straight hours of walking the day she set out to cross the border with her own mother 25 years ago.

She was 18 years old that day. The Mexico City native crossed over into San Clemente, Calif., in an arduous walk that began on the Mexican side at 9 p.m. and ended at 5 a.m. on the U.S. side. Twice the small group she traveled with was caught by la migra, now known as ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and returned to the Mexican side. On the third try in as many days the group made it and since then, this woman who has no legal status to be in the U.S. has raised a family while working six-day weeks.

And next month, her American-born daughter will vote in the state primary that will propel the candidates that much closer to the White House.

Click here for full story.