Latino/a Heritage Month will be celebrated at Illinois State University with talks on Latino immigration.
Chicago’s immigrant youth movement
Professor Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz of Loyola University Chicago and Jorge Mena Robles of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will present “Activism After DACA: Lessons from Chicago’s Immigrant Youth Movement” at 4 p.m., Tuesday, September 27, in Moulton Hall, room 210.
This talk draws from extended ethnographic research with, and participation in, Chicago’s immigrant rights movement to explore how Chicago youth have responded to the implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the extended surveillance that DACA confers.
Mena is an undocumented (DACAmented) and queer graduate of the master’s program in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He emigrated from Jalisco, Mexico, when he was 8 years old and has been involved in the undocumented immigrant youth movement since the 2009 formation of the Immigrant Youth Justice League. He is now living in Urbana where he serves as Assistant Director of La Casa Cultural Latina at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Gomberg-Muñoz is an assistant professor of anthropology at Loyola University Chicago. Her research explores how undocumented people and their family members navigate the political and socioeconomic landscape of the United States. Gomberg-Muñoz is the author of two books, Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network (Oxford, 2011) and Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed Status Families (Oxford, 2016), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.
Neoliberalism and Latinos
Professor Andrea Silva of the University of North Texas will present “Neoliberalism confronts Latinos: Paradigmatic shifts in immigration practices” at noon, Friday, September 30, in Williams Hall, room 314.
Silva’s talk examines how three neoliberal principles—privatization, efficiency, and personal responsibility—have impacted the implementation of American immigration policy, increasing the detention, abuse, and death of undocumented migrants. This change disproportionately affects Latinos, as they are more likely to either know an undocumented person, or be one themselves.
All talks are sponsored by the Latin American and Latino/a Studies program at Illinois State University.
For additional information, contact the Latin American and Latino/a Studies program at (309) 438-8290.