[URBANTH-L] CORI (Committee on Refugees & Immigrants) Business Meeting at the AAAs

[James Phillips]

As an "older" member of CORI, I'll suggest that it may be time to revisit the discussions we had some years ago when CORI moved from a focus entirely on refugee studies to a broader inclusion of migrant populations.   Is it time to return to an exclusive focus on refugee populations?  Or, perhaps more effectively, a focus on displaced populations?  Refugees and forcibly displaced people share certain characteristics with other "migrant" populations, but their experience, legal status, and the situations that commonly generate refugee populations are in many ways different from those of many other "migrant" populations, and they bring us directly into contact with certain other areas of anthropological inquiry, e.g., conflict and peace studies, human rights issues, etc. I think a new discussion that critically explores both the connections between refugee-ness or forcible displacement and other forms of human movement, as well as the uniqueness of refugee situations may be in order. In this, we may discover new linkages to the work of colleagues in areas of peace and conflict studies, human rights, environmental justice, etc.

James Phillips
Graduate Social Science Coordinator and 
Adj. Prof. of Anthropology and Latin American Studies
Southern Oregon University  

>>> "Jason Pribilsky" <pribiljc at whitman.edu> 11/19/2007 8:52 AM >>>
Dear Colleagues (old and new CORI members, scholars interested in issues
concerning immigration and refugees): 

CORI (Committee on Refugees and Immigrants) Business Meeting at the AAAs
Saturday, December 1 (6:15 - 7:30 pm). 
Contact Jason Pribilsky, CORI Chair for more details
(pribiljc at whitman.edu)

DETAILS: 
During a migration roundtable at the 2007 Applied meetings hosted by SUNTA
president David Haines, a group of young and senior CORI members came
together to discuss the future of the group. This discussion will be
furthered at the AAAs in November and I strongly encourage all past and
present members and anyone else whose research falls under the broad agenda
of CORI to give their input. When CORI was founded as a group within GAD,
its purpose was to serve as a networking conduit to bring together scholars
researching and writing about similar issues. Over the years, CORI published
an impressive collection of "Selected Papers" and was a leader in organizing
panels and planning sessions on critical policy issues such as forced
migration and refugee resettlement. In 2003, CORI joined SUNTA and found a
natural home among likeminded scholars. Nearly twenty years later, we might
ask ourselves what is the specific purpose of CORI today? Is it necessary,
for instance, given the large volume of scholars who already work on
migration-related issues, to have a separate group devoted to this topic
within SUNTA? If the answer is yes, what should the new face of this group
be? What should be its agenda for the next twenty years? I invite all who
are interested in the future of CORI to attend a business meeting, Saturday,
December 1 (6:15 - 7:30 pm). Questions? I can be reached at
pribiljc at whitman.edu 

Jason Pribilsky
Assistant Professor and Chair
Department of Anthropology
Director, Latin American Studies Program Whitman College Walla Walla, WA
99362
509.527-5162 (tel)
509.527-5026 (fax)
 
 


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