“CONFRONTING U.S. REFUGEE POLICY THEN and NOW:

PUTTING the POSTWAR PERIOD in CONVERSATION with OUR OWN”

ARC SEMINAR PRESENTATION WITH

LIBBY GARLAND

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY

KINGSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

 

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10,

4:00 – 5:30

 

After World War II, the United States passed legislation granting new kinds of immigration opportunities to some of the millions of people displaced by the war. This moment has been regarded as a turning point in U.S. refugee policy—an important opening, however limited, in an otherwise highly restrictive immigration regime. On their own, however, state policies did not (as they still do not) produce migration. Rather, the intense labor of refugees and aid groups, in the face of chaotic places, policies, and bureaucracies, made migration happen. In this presentation, I consider that kind of labor in the context of postwar Europe—the ways that refugees and their advocates there confronted massive legal and logistical barriers to migration to the United States, and scrambled to construct paths of mobility around or through them. I will also put this history in conversation with the present day, exploring how those who fight for refugee mobility now are part of a larger history of people on the move pushing hard at the closed system of national borders.

 

If you would like a tape of this presentation, please contact [email protected])

Register at: https://tinyurl.com/ARC-Seminars

Instructions: Once you click on the above link, a registration web page will appear. You then enter your name, and your email address. Click register. An individualized link  to you will be generated, and will also be sent to the email address you provided.

or at:

https://gc-cuny.zoom.us/w/91044463290?tk=kJ0qci2RRIoDBZO965VKUPYVmPLja3J8tV-UM-rVKbE.DQIAAAAVMqxCuhZXOUM2Q0dXTVNYdTg1X2FZRFdwQU9BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA