New America Center Conferences

Upcoming Conferences:
 Past Conferences:


Immigration & Entrepreneurship: An Interdisciplinary Conference
Call for Proposals


co-sponsored by:
The Center for the History of the New America (University of Maryland)
Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (University of Maryland)
The German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.)

Conveners: Prof. David B. Sicilia and Prof. David F. Barbe, University of Maryland, College Park; Prof. Dr. Hartmut Berghoff, German Historical Institute and University of Gšttingen

The United States has long been an immigrant society as well as an entrepreneurial society. This is no coincidence: immigrants launch new enterprises and invent new technologies at rates much higher than native-born Americans. As the volume of in-migration again approaches that of the "new immigration" at the turn of the twentieth century, it is time to measure how immigrants have shaped the American economy in the past and how immigration policy reform in 1965 has fostered the transformation of business and economic life in the United States. How have newcomers shaped and in turn been shaped by American economic life?

There are striking parallels between nineteenth-century immigration and contemporary immigrant entrepreneurship. Then, as now, immigrants brought considerable education, ambition, and capital, yet often were marginalized or excluded from mainstream opportunities by law, custom, and prejudice. Particular immigrant groups ultimately dominated particular industries and services. Immigrant entrepreneurs built and circulated through trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, and at times global networks of people, capital, and know-how. However, the two eras of heavy migration also differ in significant ways. Newcomers from East and South Asia and Latin America have supplanted Eastern and Southern European immigrants who dominated in the late nineteenth century, and German and Irish immigrants who arrived in the early nineteenth century. And whereas many recent immigrants, like their predecessors a century ago, have worked in low-skilled occupations, in construction, or have created small businesses, a significant portion of recent immigrants have arrived with advanced degrees and have launched businesses in the most advanced sectors of the economy, from Silicon Valley to Rte. 128, from biotech to the digital economy.

The Center for the History of the New America and the German Historical Institute invite proposals from scholars working in a variety of disciplines Ð including but not limited to history, sociology, economics, business administration, entrepreneurial studies, anthropology, and cultural studies Ð to submit research paper proposals. Comparative studies across time and place are especially welcomed.

The conference will engage these and related research topics:
  • immigrant group styles and patterns of entrepreneurship
  • immigrant entrepreneurship and U.S. economic development
  • geography of ethnic entrepreneurship
  • journeys of successful high-tech entrepreneurs
  • immigrant entrepreneurs as small proprietors
  • succeed and failure narratives and other discourse surrounding ethnic immigrant entrepreneurship
  • barriers to immigrant entrepreneurial success
  • policy implications of historical and contemporary research on immigrant entrepreneurship

For full consideration, please submit a 200-word abstract and a short c.v. to Prof. David Sicilia at immigrantentrepreneurs@umd.edu by September 15, 2011.

The conference will take place in College Park, MD, and Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2012. Presenters will be given accommodations and a travel stipend. Selected conference presenters will be invited to publish their work in an edited scholarly volume of essays that will grow out of the conference.



The Center for the History of the New America
Announces its Inaugural Conference

Born in the USA: The Politics of Birthright Citizenship in Historical Perspective

 March 29 & 30, 2012
University of Maryland at College Park

Co-Sponsors:

 Institute for Constitutional History, University of Maryland Office of Equity and Diversity, University of Maryland Office of Undergraduate Studies, & The University of Maryland Law School



Next March, an interdisciplinary group of prominent academics, lawyers, jurists, journalists, and political figures will assemble in College Park for the Center for a New America's first major conference. Their goal: to place in historical perspective the current debate as to whether the United States ought to reconsider birthright citizenship, which grants automatic citizenship to most persons born on the soil of the United States. Birthright citizenship is part of the Constitution, having been put there by the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868. It has given the United States one of the most liberal citizenship regimes in the world, and it has helped to build America's reputation as a land of immigrants, where anyone can come to seek opportunity, liberty, and equality in a regime of laws that does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, or national origins.

Some who want to eliminate birthright citizenship argue that it has acted as a perverse incentive for immigrants to seek illegal entry to the United States. It permits illegal immigrants to think that they can find a route to permanent residence and security in the United States by giving birth to children on American soil. Their children, who become American citizens upon birth, the argument goes, will "anchor" the illegal parents to America, thus rewarding behavior that ought to be punished. The state of Arizona is at the forefront of this campaign against birthright citizenship, as it is for other aspects of the campaign against illegal immigrants. In the short term, anti-illegal immigrant forces in the state hope to trigger a legal challenge to a nineteenth-century Supreme Court ruling that declared that a child born to non-citizens on American soil is in fact an American citizen. In the long term these forces hope to stimulate a national campaign to amend the Fourteenth Amendment.

As with many issues regarding immigration, the debate sometimes proceeds with a lot of passion and without a strong knowledge of history. Here are some questions that would benefit from a robust exploration: First, how aware were the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment about the immigration question? To the extent to which they were, what were their thoughts about immigration and birthright citizenship? What do we know of the original intent of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause? Second, why did the Supreme Court in 1898 uphold birthright citizenship for the children of non-citizens? And why in some cases were Native Americans treated differently with regard to birthright citizenship? Third, how well or how poorly did birthright citizenship work for America, in regards both to legal and illegal immigration, over the course of American history after 1868? On balance, has birthright citizenship been a source of cohesion or discord, of Americanization or cultural balkanization, in American life? Fourth, from the contemporary perspective, what evidence can be marshaled to show that illegal immigrants today are motivated to come by the promise of birthright citizenship for their children? And, finally, what would be the consequences to the Constitution, to personal liberties, and to immigration of a successful effort to remove birthright citizenship from the Fourteenth Amendment?

2011 Pulitzer Prize Winner Eric Foner of Columbia University will open the conference with a keynote address. Other confirmed participants include former Solicitor General of the United States Walter Dellinger; Fourteenth Amendment experts Peter Schuck (Yale Law School), Garrett Epps (University of Baltimore Law School), and Mark Graber (University of Maryland Law School); noted historians Gary Gerstle (Vanderbilt University), David Gutierrez (UCSD), Linda Kerber (University of Iowa), Mae Ngai (Columbia University), and William Novak (University of Michigan School of Law); New York Times journalists Marc Lacey and Nina Bernstein; sociologist Alejandro Portes (Princeton University); and legal scholars Linda Bosniak (Rutgers Law School), Christina Burnett (Columbia Law School), Ayelet Shachar (University of Toronto Law School), and Rebecca Tsosie (Arizona St. Law School). More participants will be confirmed in the coming weeks.

Past Conferences

University of Maryland, College Park
Latin American Studies Center
Presented
"Slaves on the Move:
African Biographies in 19th Century Brazil"


Featuring talks by
João José Reis & Keila Grinberg
Moderated by Daryle Williams
Thursday, April 12
2:00-5:00 PM
Maryland Room in Marie Mount Hall


"Social Mobility Among Africans in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: The Case of Manoel Ricardo"
By: João José Reis
During his presentation Dr. Reis discussed the life of Manuel Joaquim Ricardo, a slave, slave trader, slaveowner, who died a rich freedman in Bahia in 1865. His trajectory in life illuminates controversial aspects of Brazilian slave society, such as the opportunities and obstacles to upward social mobility of African-born individuals.

João José Reis is professor of History at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil and the author of Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The 1835 Muslim Uprising in Bahia and Death is a Festival: Funeral Rites and Popular Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Brazil.

"Re-enslavement Among Africans in Brazil's Nineteenth-Century Southern Frontier: The case of Rufina"
By: Keila Grinberg
During her presentation Dr. Grinberg analyzed the relationship between slavery, the process of state building and international relations in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Dr. Grinberg proposed three arguments: (1) that slavery, and especially the way slavery ended in Brazil, helped to shape international relations between those countries; (2) slaves, aware of this context, would flee Brazil and argue they became free as soon as they stepped in “free soil”. Finally, (3) that in South America the action of slaves and the diplomatic tensions it created led to a wide definition of the concept of “free soil”, attached to notions of territory and nationhood.

Keila Grinberg is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan and an Associate Professor at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). Grinberg is the author of several books and articles, among them Slavery, Freedom and the Law in the Atlantic World (with Sue Peabody, Bedford Books, 2007).

Click here for flyer.

 

Previous Forum
Armed Xenophobia: The Global War Against Immigrants


Armed Xenophobia: The Global War Against Immigrants is a Forum organized by the Nathan and Jeannette Miller Center for Historical Studies and Center for the History of the New America to discuss the world-wide upswell of violence against immigrants. The Forum grows out of the horrific events in Norway in July 2011, when a right-wing terrorist obsessed with the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country murdered some 77 men and women, and terrorized thousands more. While at the extreme, the violence in Norway reflects similar anti-immigrant violence in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas-including the United States. Armed Xenophobia will examine this phenomenon, its root causes, various manifestations, and global political implications with a lecture by prize-winning journalist Jeffrey Kaye on February 16th, followed by a roundtable discussion of leading scholars of immigration on February 17th.

Details:

Thursday, Feb. 16: Keynote Address by Jeffrey Kaye

5:00 pm, Ulrich Recital Hall (Tawes Hall), Reception to follow

Jeffrey Kaye is a freelance journalist, writer, and producer. He is the author of Moving Millions: How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration (Wiley, 2010). He worked as a correspondent for the PBS NewsHour for 25 years and was a longtime contributor to "World Report," the public affairs program of HDNet television. Kaye has traveled the world as a reporter, and is a frequent public speaker and commentator, chiefly on the subject of immigration.

Friday, Feb. 17: Roundtable Discussion

1:00-3:00 pm, McKeldin Library Special Events Room (6th floor)

Participants:

Carolyn Brown, American University (focus: the Americas)

Marlène Laruelle, George Washington University (focus: Eurasia)

Mark Miller, University of Delaware (focus: Europe)

Susan Terrio, Georgetown University (focus: Europe and U.S.)

Carolyn Brown is assistant professor of journalism at American University's School of Communication. Before joining AU's faculty, she worked at for MSNBC News, Fox News Channel, CBS news, and NBC Sports. Professor Brown's area of expertise is immigration/the border, and she recently produced a documentary, On the Line, which followed the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps in their activities on Arizona's border with Mexico. Other current projects include researching the history and growth of Spanish-language television in the United States.

Marlène Laruelle is a Research Professor of International Affairs, The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington DC.

Mark J. Miller is Emma Smith Morris Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. He specializes in Migration Studies, Comparative Politics, and European Politics. His research focuses on comparative immigration and refugee policies, global migration and migration and security. He teaches classes on international migration, Arab/Israeli politics, comparative political terrorism, European politics, and the politics of post-industrial states.

Susan Terrio is a cultural anthropologist who teaches in the Department of Anthropology at Georgetown University where she specializes in youth and globalization, legal systems, juvenile justice, migration, race and ethnicity in France and the United States. Her latest book, Judging Mohammed. Juvenile Delinquency, Immigration, and Exclusion at the Paris Palace of Justice, was published by Stanford University Press in 2009. Professor Terrio is currently at work on a new book, which focuses on the federal custodial system for undocumented, unaccompanied minors in the United States.

For more information on General Directions/ Map, Click Here.

For more information on Visitor Parking, Click Here.


FORUM: DREAM Act and Education
Date: 10/4/11-4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
location: Prince George's Room, Stamp Student Union

A forum to address the local and national significance of the DREAM Act for Latin American immigrants and Marylanders in general.
In May 2011, Maryland passed the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act and became the eleventh state in the nation to grant undocumented students instate tuition at public institutions of higher learning. The law has been challenged by a petition drive calling for a referendum in November 2012. In August, Casa de Maryland, a non-profit organization devoted to advancing the rights of Latino and Latina immigrants, challenged the legality of the petition drive in court.

The Panel included:

* The Honorable Victor Ramirez, Maryland State Senate and author of the Maryland Dream Act
* Kim Propeack , Director of Community Organizing and Political Action, CASA de Maryland
* Roberto Juarez, Maryland Dream Youth Committee
* Mary Giovagnoli, Director, Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Council

Moderator: Karin Rosemblatt, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Latin American Studies Center

Welcome Remarks: Bonnie Thornton Dill, Dean, College of Arts and Humanities

http://www.arhu.umd.edu/events/forum-dream-act-and-education

DREAM Act and Education Forum from arhu on Vimeo.

Introductory Forum for the Center: April 13, 2011
Maryland Room -- Marie Mount Hall
3p.m. - 4:30p.m -- Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Featured Speakers: Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor of History and Julie Greene, Professor of History

Since 1965, legal and demographic changes have made the United States an immigrant society once again. Inspired by this fact, the Center for the History of the New America aims to make the University of Maryland the hub for understanding the long immigration history of this country, from 1500 to the present, and its connections to world history. The Center will provide a distinctive institutional home for interdisciplinary and trans-national research, for training faculty and students, and for distributing information about the history of the immigrant experience to a broad public.

The conference brought in many students, administrators and professors interested in the new center.

For more information or to request more information from this conference, contact Ira Berlin at newamerica@umd.edu

2115 Francis Scott Key     College Park, MD 20742     (301) 405-4305     fax: (301) 314-9399     newamerica@umd.edu