[URBANTH-L]CFP: CORI Panels for 2008 AAA Meeting

[Benito Vergara]

The 2008 meeting themes provide us the opportunity to critically
examine anthropology's relationships across subfields, disciplines,
and publics, in which the study of immigrant/migrants and refugees has
been central. Please
read the attached for ideas for organizing CORI themed panels and feel
free to send me any panel proposals to distribute to the CORI list.
Also, if you would like to be added to the CORI listserve, please
contact me at
olearya at email.arizona.edu.

Anna Ochoa O'Leary, Ph.D., Chair
Committee on Refugees and Immigrants
Mexican American Studies and Research Center
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
http://masrc.arizona.edu/
Office: César E. Chávez Building #207-A
Office Phone: 520-626-8134

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2008 AAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco:

"Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement."

A Call for CORI Panels

Inclusion

This theme highlights research problems and relationships that address
the knowledges and concerns of those who have struggled for full
belonging and recognition by dominant (often host-) societies because
of preconceptions about the seemingly static division of intellectual
labor.  I imagine a panel of papers that show how as anthropologists
we bring immigrant/refugee voices and perspectives into the core of
our research, and how this inclusion democratize the research
endeavour as well as other public spaces. I would invite you to think
about the challenges refugee/immigrants face with inclusion and what
opportunities open up to them with inclusion and based on your work,
address what and how anthropology contributes to the understanding of
transnational/movement processes with cross-disciplinary and
participant inclusion.

Collaboration

Related to inclusion, is the theme of collaboration. Perhaps many of
you already include participatory action research methods that engage
communities into knowledge production process, not only as
"informants" but as research consultants and collaborators.
Contributions might include analyses of outcomes, what works and what
doesn't, how this process contributes to the field of anthropology,
and implications for researching stress on immigrant/refugee
communities brought on by recent politicized resentment to their
presence.

Engagement

How do we increase our engagement with communities, especially with
migrants and refugees in politically volatile areas of the world? How
do we increase our engagement with "undocumented" subject populations
who might prefer to remain out of the public purview, especially in
light of harsher immigrant enforcement policies. In this way, the
nature of research has changed radically over the course of the 20th
century, in large part due to how different governments (local, state,
and national) have responded to public concerns regarding immigration.
For researchers, the challenge is then how we conceptualize the roles
that institutional and social structures play in both destabilizing
and maintaining spatial orders. How are transnational communities then
affected by public policy and policy discourse? How do different
authorities at municipal, state, national, and international levels
conceive of public domains of care and the provision of public
services? How are notions of race, citizen v. non-citizen, taxpayer v.
non-taxpayer, among others, employed discursively?