PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – A symposium recently held at the PSTC brought together scholars working with undocumented immigrant communities and examining the role of place and space in facilitating and promoting social movement activism. The two-day event, “Migrant Illegality across Uneven Legal Geographies,” was coordinated by PSTC Faculty Associates Kevin Escudero and Andrea Flores, along with collaborators from California State University Dominguez Hills, Harvard University, the University of Colorado Denver, and the University of Denver. An initial gathering took place in Denver in April.

Flores, an assistant professor of Education, noted that the symposium’s takeaways included the “continuing importance of the federal government in setting immigration law, despite increased devolution to states and municipalities” and the ongoing challenges for undocumented youth, even those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, to institutional access such as higher education.

Flores also said that “bureaucratic inclusion for undocumented people (in K-12 schools, etc.) can lead to a limited sense of belonging, but the continued exclusions of undocumented youth in other bureaucratic domains (like work and higher ed) continue to be limiting,” and there are “significant differences in immigrant reception and immigration enforcement regionally that have social, emotional, legal, and civic consequences for undocumented youth.”

The event included a keynote address and panel presentations as well as workshops for participants whose papers will be considered for inclusion in the second of two special issues organized around the conference topic that will showcase the “work of scholars conducting research at the nexus of immigrant experiences, law, and space/place/geography,” Flores said. The first issue, based on the Denver conference, is due out in Law and Policy in January.

Approximately 40 people attended the symposium at Brown, including Mary Romero, president of the American Sociological Association, which funded the symposiums through the Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline. Also in attendance was Cecilia Menjívar, the Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair in Sociology at UCLA and a leading scholar of immigration.

The symposiums grew out of a panel that Escudero, an assistant professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies, and two of the symposium collaborators had participated in at the Law and Society Association Conference, where “they noticed a common thread across their work with undocumented immigrant communities—the importance of place and local context in facilitating and promoting social movement activism,” Flores said.