Spring 2006 Newsletter

Contents:

1. Spring Conference on Immigrant Rights Brings Together Leading Scholars, Students and Activists
2. ISSC Fellows' Recent Achievements, Honors and Awards
3. Patricia Baquedano-López Awarded Tenure
4. ISSC's Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention (CCIYVP) Welcomes Dr. Deborah Lustig
5. Spotlight on Research: CCIYVP’s Evaluation of the Roosevelt Village Center
6. Upcoming Fall Events - Save these Dates: Hurricane Katrina Book Colloquium and ISSC's 30th Anniversary Celebration Conference
7. Thank You and Congratulations to ISSC's Newest Graduates

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1. Spring Conference on Immigrant Rights Brings Together Leading Scholars, Students, and Activists

On March 16 and 17, ISSC, Boalt Hall's Center for Social Justice, and the Center for Latino Policy Research sponsored a spring conference, “Citizenship Without Borders: Belonging and Exclusion in Immigrant America,“ at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. The conference brought together over 100 leading scholars, immigrant rights activists, service providers, faculty, students, and community members to discuss the civic and political participation of immigrants, share stories about the daily practices of citizenship engaged in and experienced by immigrants, and consider the role that citizenship status plays and should play in mediating the legal rights and social benefits that immigrants enjoy in the United States.

Panelists included Linda Bosniak, Professor of Law at Rutgers University; Karthick Ramakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC Riverside; Linton Joaquin, Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center; Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President of the SEIU; Michael Jones-Correa, Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University; Amagda Perez, Executive Director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation; Leoncio Vásquez, Member of the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales; and Isabel Garcia, Co-chair of Derechos Humanos, among others.

Topics addressed by the speakers included changing demographics and levels of civic engagement among immigrant populations in the U.S.; work-, school-, and neighborhood-based forms of immigrant activism; efforts to promote the rights and opportunities of low-income immigrants and their family members; mechanisms that encourage and discourage the civic and political engagement of immigrants at the local level; and transnational forms of political engagement. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) gave the keynote address entitled, “The Broken Immigration System Can't be Fixed Without Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

The conference was held in conjunction with the annual Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Lecture on Access to Justice. This year the Raven Lecture was given by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Dean of the Georgetown University Law Center. Dean Aleinikoff has held several high-level positions in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) at the U.S. Department of Justice. He was former general counsel of the INS (1994-1995) and served as executive associate commissioner for programs (1995-1997). Mariana Bustamante, who is the Public Education Coordinator of the national ACLU Immigrants' Right Project, and Kevin R. Johnson, who is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law and Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis, served as Raven Lecture Respondents. Copies of Dean Aleinikoff's lecture, “The Geography of Citizenship,” and the Respondents' remarks are posted on the conference website.

To download these documents or to view video of the conference, including the Raven Lecture, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee's keynote address, and the conference panels, please click here

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2. ISSC Fellow's Recent Achievements, Honors and Awards

Congratulations to ISSC's First- and Second-Year Fellows on their various recent achievements, honors and awards!

First-year Fellows:
Peter Allen was awarded a 2006 Bancroft Summer Fellowship. Els de Graauw was awarded mini-research grants from UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies and from Harvard University's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. Juan De Lara passed his oral exams in October. Catalina Garzon passed her qualifying exams in May. Catalina was also awarded a Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship and the prestigious UC Berkeley Mentored Research Award. Jane Rongerude was awarded an NSF Dissertation Research Grant.

Second-year Fellows:
Cristina Cielo passed her qualifying exams in May by preparing and successfully defending three tutorial papers. Lilia Soto passed her oral exams and was advanced to candidacy in December. In April, she successfully defended her dissertation prospectus. Lilia was also awarded the Dissertation Writing Fellowship in Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara for the 2006-2007 academic year, and she is the recipient of a 2006 Bancroft Summer Fellowship. Diana Pei Wu completed her dissertation and was awarded her Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy and Management in May. Roberto Hernandez published “Running for Peace and Dignity: From Traditionally Radical Chicanos/as to Radically Traditional Xicanas/os” in the forthcoming Latino/as in the World System: Decolonization Struggles in the 21st Century U.S. Empire, edited by Ramón Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and José David Saldívar (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005). (For more information on this publication please click here: Latino/as in the World System.)

For more information on the research interests of ISSC's First- and Second-Year Fellows please click here

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3. Patricia Baquedano-López Awarded Tenure

In February Patricia Baquedano-López, who is an ISSC-affiliated faculty member and serves on ISSC's Advisory Board, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in UC Berkeley's School of Education. On March 3, ISSC and the Center for Latino Policy Research co-hosted a special gathering of family, friends and colleagues to honor Patricia and celebrate her achievement. At the celebration, faculty and students offered congratulatory toasts and expressed their deep appreciation for Patricia's passionate teaching, dedicated scholarship, inspirational mentoring, and sincere friendship.

Professor Baquedano-López conducts research that examines the language socialization literacy practices of Spanish-speaking students enrolled in religious instruction in Catholic churches and local public schools. She has also investigated the language socialization practices of English-speaking children who receive care from Spanish-speaking Latina nannies. In 2004 Professor Baquedano-López received the UC Berkeley Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award. She was a fellow of UC ACCORD (All-Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity) from 2001-03, a UC President's Post-Doctoral Fellow from 1998-99, and a Spencer Dissertation Year Fellow from 1997-98. She is a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Latinos in Education and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

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4. ISSC's Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention Welcomes Dr. Deborah Lustig

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Deborah Lustig has joined the staff of ISSC's Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention as an Associate Specialist. Dr. Lustig earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1997, where she specialized in anthropology of the urban United States, with an emphasis on class, race/ethnicity, and youth. Since then she has taught courses in multicultural and urban education, community studies, research methods, and race and ethnicity as a lecturer at Santa Clara University, San Francisco State University, St. Mary's College, and Chabot College. In 2005 she was a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Educational Foundations at Egerton University in Kenya, where she conducted research on gender and education. She also has conducted research and applied projects in various urban communities in the U.S.

Dr. Lustig will work closely with faculty, staff, and community partners to provide assistance in the design and reporting of the Center's project research. In addition, she will lead ISSC's Youth Violence Prevention Graduate Fellows Training Program; develop new grant proposals and implement new projects related to culture, immigration, and youth violence prevention research; organize colloquia, conferences, working groups, and other public events related to the work of the Center; and serve as a liaison between the Center, the University, and the wider community.

The Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention (CCIYVP) is jointly run by the Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC), the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), UC Berkeley's School of Law (Boalt Hall), and UCSF. Franklin Zimring, who is the William G. Simon Professor of Law at Boalt Hall and chairman of the criminal justice research program at the Institute for Legal Research, oversees the Center's operations. The Center's mission is to research the causes and prevention of youth violence, especially among Asian Pacific Islander and Latino immigrant populations in Oakland. The Center serves as a gathering place for community members, policy makers and researchers who are dedicated to identifying shared priorities, developing innovative strategies for studying these pressing concerns, and translating and disseminating this information and knowledge into health and community practice.

If you would like to receive CCIYVP's monthly newsletter, please contact Dr. Deborah Lustig at dlustig@berkeley.edu.

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5. Spotlight on Research: CCIYVP’s Evaluation of the Roosevelt Village Center

On March 16 and 17, 2006, ISSC and Boalt Hall's Center for Social Justice will co-sponsor a conference entitled, “Citizenship Without Borders: Belonging and Exclusion in Immigrant America.“ The conference will bring together leading scholars, immigrant rights activists, community-based service providers, members of the legal community, and immigrants, as well as UCB and Boalt Hall faculty, students, and staff to discuss the civic and political practices of immigrants (whether naturalized citizens, legal residents, or undocumented); to share stories about the daily practices of citizenship engaged in and experienced by immigrants; and to consider the role that citizenship status plays and should play in mediating the legal rights and social benefits that immigrants enjoy and are granted access to in the United States.

The conference will provide a forum in which to debate the meaning of citizenship and the logic of entitlement that flows from (legal) citizenship status, challenge assumptions about who is/can be a "citizen," and redraw the conceptual boundaries used to define membership in civic and political life. Key questions that the conference will address include: On what should the granting of rights and access to social benefits turn (e.g. personhood, citizenship, residency)? How might the meanings ascribed to "citizenship" be reconstituted to capture the transterritorial qualities of political life? What are the political implications, if any, of severing the association between citizenship and the nation-state?

The conference will be held in conjunction with the annual Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Lecture on Access to Justice, scheduled for Thursday, March 16 at 4pm in the Booth Auditorium of Boalt Hall. Alexander Aleinikoff, Dean of Georgetown University's law school and former General Counsel and Executive Associate Commissioner for the INS under the Clinton Administration, will be one of the Lecture's keynote speakers.

The conference will continue on Friday, March 17, with a full day of panels and a lunch roundtable featuring a distinguished group of academics, practitioners, activists and policymakers.

More details to follow soon!

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6. Upcoming Fall Events - Save these Dates!

Hurricane Katrina Book Colloquium, Thursday, September 7, 12:00 - 1:30 pm, ISSC's Conference Room

On Thursday, September 7, from 12:00-1:30 pm, ISSC will host a book colloquium featuring John Brown Childs, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and editor of Hurricane Katrina: Response and Responsibilities (New Pacific Press, 2005). Professor Childs will offer an evaluation of what has and has not happened over the past year in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, in addition to reflecting on what still needs to happen. Two of the book's contributors, Hardy Frye, who is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz and teaches in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley, and William Russell Ellis, Jr., who is Professor Emeritus of Architecture at UC Berkeley, will also join the discussion. Copies of the book will be on sale (for 10$) and available for signing. All proceeds from the book go to the People's Hurricane Relief Fund. (This event is a brown bag lunch. Drinks and dessert will be provided.)

ISSC's 30th Anniversary Celebration Conference, Friday, October 20, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm

This fall ISSC will celebrate its 30th year as a research unit dedicated to understanding the processes of social change in ways that contribute to transforming the conditions of inequality. On Friday, October 20, we will honor the distinguished life of the Institute and those who have contributed to it by presenting an all-day conference, "Celebrating the Institute for the Study of Social Change: Thirty Years of Research with a Conscience." Please save this date and plan to join us for this memorable event. (The conference will be held on the UC Berkeley campus, although the specific location of the conference has not been determined.)

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5. Thank You and Congratulations to ISSC's Newest Graduates

We wish to thank and congratulate ISSC undergraduate assistants Alicia Arney and Fennie Wang (who help at the front desk) and Geoffrey Kwan (who assists with IT-related issues), who graduated from UC Berkeley in May. Alicia, Fennie and Geoff have contributed in countless ways over the past several years to ensuring the smooth operation of the Institute. We wish them well as they leave ISSC to pursue their career aspirations.

Alicia Arney graduated with a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and a B.A. in Psychology. She is currently interviewing with several research and biotech jobs in San Diego with the intention of perhaps pursing graduate school after taking a few years off to work.

Geoffrey Kwan graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science and Engineering. This fall he will be traveling to India to begin 6 months of training before returning to the Bay Area to work for InfoSys.

Fennie Wang graduated with a B.A. in Business Administration and a B.A. in Legal Studies. She will be moving to New York this fall to begin working at JP Morgan.