[URBANTH-L]CFP: CORI SfAA Panels

[Angela Jancius]

From: Nancy Burke <nburke at cc.ucsf.edu>

To Interested SUNTA and CORI Members:

The following panels have been suggested by CORI members for the upcoming 
SfAA meetings in Tampa, FL (March 2007). Please contact panel organizers if 
interested in submitting an abstract for review. All abstracts should be 
received no later than September 8.

1. Undocumented migration and issues of medical/health care access
Heide Castaneda hcastane at email.arizona.edu

2. Children and immigration (to be refined based on responses)
Terry Woronov (tworonov at email.arizona.edu)

3. "Wanted: Experts in and of the Field": Issues of Elite Migration
It is a recent truism that more people are moving around the world than ever 
before.  It is as if no one is staying "in their place", as if people had a 
social "natural habitat".

The migration of various peoples around the world for a myriad of reasons 
makes it apparent that humanity's norm is much closer to people on the move 
than one of remaining in place.  Much of the academic focus on migration, as 
per anthropology's disciplinary history, has been on marginalized 
populations - "refugees" from natural and man-made disasters and war zones, 
"asylum seekers" from various forms of political repression, and "illegal 
immigrants" seeking underpaid, labor intensive, low status work that already 
established populations do not wish to take up.  These common 
classifications highlight government attempts to control "undesirables" from 
entering a particular state.  However, states and corporations have in the 
past and continue at present to actively recruit specific migrants, whether 
these are target ethnic groups, or "experts" - highly skilled individuals to 
the point that existing legal restrictions may be circumvented.  It is this 
desired migration of "experts" that this panel explores, highlighting desire 
of the so-called recipient nation-state informs the means of recruitment, 
the paths taken, and sorts of migrants that are actively sought out by both 
states and transnational corporations.  What informs and shapes these 
processes of encouraged migration? How do these processes parallel or 
contradict the migration of marginalized populations?  The papers here 
identify issues of power and representation in the framing of migration 
discourse with related impacts on migration policies. Thomas Carter 
(ethnocuba at yahoo.com)