Immigration and Mobility Studies

With New York and Long Island continuing to be immigration hotspots, this initiative is committed to probing the intersectional dimensions of the immigrant experience, including how immigrant communities (local and global) confront inequality and fight for social justice.  Again, analytics of work and class are essential for understanding what immigrant may face and endure. Through leadership of Lori Flores and Nancy Hiemstra, this intiative hopes to become a vehicle for intellectual exchange and collaboration on these topics among Stony Brook and other scholars, while also seeking to connect with and support to communities of immigrants on Long Island, and the organizations that work with them. One inspiration precedent is the CSWCL project “Unseen America,” which furnished immigrant Latino workers with cameras and professional photographic guidance to enable them to tell their own stories, which were then disseminated widely. Building on CSWCL ties to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, faculty working on other areas of migration and labor (Tracey Walters along with Daniela Fleshner) will strengthen our relationship with this organization and others who work on behalf of Caribbean, Asian, and Latina immigrant workers.