Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC) UC Berkeley

CONFERENCES

Below are conferences that the Institute for the Study of Social Change has sponsored or is currently planning. Click on the link for more information.

VIDEO OF CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

Click here to view videos of ISSC speakers, conferences and events.

PAST CONFERENCES

Social Change and Youth Engagement in Immigrant Communities:
Early Findings, Future Directions

An ISSC Undergraduate and Graduate Research Symposium

Friday, May 8, 9:00am – 5:00pm
Goldberg Room, Simon Hall
Berkeley School of Law, University of California

Providing UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students with research training and opportunities to collaborate with faculty on groundbreaking research projects is central to the mission of the Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC). On May 8, ISSC sponsored a symposium featuring outstanding undergraduate and graduate students involved in locally-based interdisciplinary research and community engagement. Students offered presentations based on early findings or reflected upon their experiences with one of three ISSC projects:

The Immigrant Families' Civic and Political Engagement Project uses in-depth interviews with Bay Area residents to examine the mechanisms that encourage and shape civic and political engagement among Mexican, Chinese, and Vietnamese immigrant parents and their U.S.-born adolescent children.

The Youth Experiences of Neighborhood Change Project uses interviews with young adults who grew up in the San Antonio neighborhood of Oakland to explore the links between changes in neighborhood characteristics and youth outcomes, including education, health, and delinquency.

The University-Community Network Internship Program, part of ISSC's Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention, is a year-long class for UC Berkeley undergraduates. The program provides students who are interested in community-based, participatory research with research training and internships at community-based organizations in Oakland. Students plan and conduct small-scale research projects on topics related to youth violence prevention, including restorative justice, dating violence, and youth leadership programs.

AGENDA:

9:00-9:15am Welcome and Opening Remarks

Michael Omi, Interim Director, ISSC and Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
Christina Maslach, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley

9:15-10:45am Panel 1: Understandings of Belonging: The Importance of Citizenship, Membership and Place For Mobilizing Immigrant Families, Immigrant Families’ Civic Engagement Project

Introduction and Project Overview:
Irene Bloemraad, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
Christine Trost, Assistant Director, ISSC

Student Presenters:
Angela Fillingim & Heidy Sarabia Lucia Kuang & Annie Lin Commentator: Kelvin Quan, JD, MPH, Assistant Dean, Business and Administrative Services, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

11:00am-12:15pm Panel 2: Sites and Sources of Political Learning and Mobilization in Immigrant Communities, Immigrant Familiesâ€™ Civic Engagement Project

Student Presenters:
Edwin Ackerman & Sam Quintanar
Kimberly Huang & Gordon Shen
Huan Jany Gao & Ivy Ngo

Commentator:
Ivy Schlegel, High School Program Coordinator, Oakland Asian Students Educational Services (OASES)

1:30-3:00pm Panel 3: Youth Violence in a Changing Neighborhood: Family, Race, Gender and Policing in San Antonio, Oakland, Youth Experiences of Neighborhood Change Project

Introduction:
Deborah Lustig, Training Coordinator, Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention, ISSC

Student Presenters:
Morgan Elam, Shafinaaz Kamrul, Zachary Taylor, Sandra Yang
Mitzi Iniguez (poster presentation)

Commentator: Jonathan Simon, Professor of Law, Berkeley Law

3:30-4:45pm Panel 4: Understanding Youth Violence Prevention in Oakland: Diverse Perspectives, Practices, and Possibilities for Change, University-Community Network Internship Program

Introduction:
Emily Gleason, Instructor, University-Community Network Internship Program and PhD candidate, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley

Student Presenters:
Charmaine Chui (Internship organization: Ella Baker Center for Human Rights)
Daanika Gordon (Internship organization: Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth)
Emily Han (Internship organization: Family Violence Law Center)
Eva Holt-Rusmore (Internship organization: Youth ALIVE!)
Yolanda Tejeda (Internship organization: Sports4Kids)
Julisa Maldonado Vargas (Internship organization: Youth Together)

Commentator: Jose Arias, PhD Student, Graduate School of Education and ISSC Youth Violence Prevention Graduate Fellow, UC Berkeley

Co-sponsored by the Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention and the University-Community Network Program.

In Search of a Collective Voice:
The Latina/o Academy

Thursday, May 1 – Saturday, May 3, 2008
University of California at Berkeley
The massive marches for immigrant rights in the Spring of 2006 challenged everyone to conceive of new efforts, strategies, and institutions to oppose trends to criminalize and systematically marginalize Latina/os and other people of color and minority groups in the United States. The demographic growth of these communities also demands new interventions in the public sphere that promote the exercise of critique, the search for justice, and social transformation. This conference brought together experts on existing efforts to connect research with communities, and scholarly work with social change. Over 80 core participants from different parts of the United States met for this historic gathering to discuss the potential of founding a Latina/o Academy of Arts and Sciences that would bring together Latina/o scholars in the search for social and epistemic justice.
Click here for more information and to view videos of this conference.

Whose Poverty? Whose Crime? Unlocking the Criminalization of Poverty.

Thursday and Friday, March 6th and 7th, 2007
Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley

Law’s Violence, Ruptured Community: Justice and Healing for Immigrant Youth

Thursday and Friday, March 8th and 9th, 2007
Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley
Videos of this conference available through the above link.

Celebrating the Institute for the Study of Social Change:
Thirty Years of Research with a Conscience

Friday, October 20, 2006
Toll Room, Alumni House, University of California at Berkeley
This year, the Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC) will celebrate thirty years of research and graduate training 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 with an all-day conference. The conference will offer a series of panels highlighting several of the many significant research projects undertaken at ISSC that have influenced academic research, public debate and social policy, and have helped to establish new research agendas and fields of study in the social sciences. The panels will feature studies of dual work families; longshore workers and the management of labor disputes; exclusionary practices associated with genetic testing and screening; policy related to Chicanos and Latinos; affirmative action and diversity in higher education; and, more recently political and social issues involving immigrant youth. Faculty and graduate students who played a key role on these projects will reflect upon their involvement and the ways that their research impacted both their careers and the field. In addition, one current and four former graduate students will reflect upon the ways that their involvement in ISSC's Graduate Fellows Training Program has impacted their careers as scholars and teachers.
See pictures from this conference!

Citizenship Without Borders (Spring 2006)

This conference brought together leading scholars, immigrant rights activists and service providers, members of the legal community, and UCB and Boalt Hall faculty and students to evaluate the civic and political participation of immigrants; 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 receive in the United States. The conference provided a forum where participants debated the meaning of citizenship and the logic of entitlement that flows from citizenship status, challenged assumptions about who is and can be a "citizen" and redrew the conceptual boundaries used to define membership in civic and political life.