During winter break, eight Haverford students learned about push and pull factors of migration, as well as community experiences and effects, through the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship’s Migration Field Studies Program. This semester, students and faculty across the Tri-Co continue to advance their understandings of migration through coursework and engagement with visiting speakers.
A series of speakers will be visiting the Tri-Co campuses in the coming months, offering in-depth and varied perspectives of the migrant experience from advocacy efforts to theoretical discussion of international border politics. This begins on March 1st at Bryn Mawr with Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Professor of American Studies at Yale, who will present her research on the x-ray surveillance technology used by border agents and its relationship to cases of gender-based violence against border crossers.
Bryn Mawr graduate Robin Reineke, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Colibri Center for Human Rights, will continue the conversation about border violence when she visits Haverford on March 17th. Through forensic science and DNA work at Colibri, Reineke is advancing efforts to identify migrants who suffer border-related deaths, while assisting and advocating for the families of missing migrants.
Later in the semester, Haverford will welcome Rutgers Law professor Linda S. Bosniak on April 6th for a public lecture on her extensive work regarding immigrant rights, while Swarthmore brings The New School’s Miriam Ticktin to their campus. Ticktin, an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility, will lead a discussion on European border politics.
These events are designed to augment coursework that students are engaging with across the Tri-Co this year. At Bryn Mawr, for example, students in an interdisciplinary, multi-course 360 program are studying Migrations and Borderlands from a broad swathe of perspectives this semester, including sociology, economics, cultural representation, and xenophobia.
As students learn more about migration through their academics, the CPGC continues to support opportunities to complicate and apply theoretical understanding through experiential engagement. For current students, this may look like a summer internship with Puentes de Salud working with South Philadelphia’s Latino community through the center’s education, community, and health care programs.
Co-founded in 2006 by Steve Larson ‘83 (now Executive Director), Puentes has hosted several Haverford College students in internship positions over the years. Sarah Dwyer ‘17 worked as a teacher in a summer literacy program for 5th and 6th graders through a CPGC-funded grant last summer. For graduating seniors who are accepted as fellows at Haverford House, a year-long fellowship with Puentes is one of several community partnership positions based in Philadelphia. Alexandra Wolkoff ‘14, currently the non-profit organization’s Director of Education, spent the year following graduation working with Puentes through the fellowship program.
Haverford House Fellows have also had opportunities to serve as paralegals, sometimes specifically supporting migrant rights. Itzel Delgado-Gonzalez ‘16, currently works with the Philadelphia Legal Assistance Pennsylvania Farmworker Project as an advocate for migrant and seasonal farmworkers both across the state and locally in the mushroom-rich town of Kennett Square.
Six fellowship positions are offered annually through the competitive, CPGC-funded post-bac program, which also allows fellows the time to lead independent projects each week. For Itzel, this means working with the Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Studies concentration at Haverford to strengthen its relationship with the Latino communities in Philadelphia and Norristown.
Through the upcoming community events and issue-focused programming, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore continue their commitments to the support of migration studies locally and abroad. For more details about any of the Tri-Co events or CPGC-funded opportunities, please reach out to office staff at hc-cpgc [at] haverford.edu.
