The 29th Annual Ira C. Rothgerber Conference: "Pursuing Citizenship"
This year's conference built upon Colorado Law Professor Ming Hsu Chen's new book, Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era, in which she argues that the citizen/alien binary should instead be reframed as a spectrum of citizenship, a concept that emphasizes continuities between the otherwise distinct experiences of membership and belonging for immigrants seeking to become citizens. In addition, citizenship consists of economic, social, political, and legal dimensions; the modern era of intense immigration enforcement distorts the balance and produces a sense of citizenship insecurity. This conference charted a broad conception of citizenship, putting the law in its social context, and to explore its inextricable relationship to immigration enforcement in the modern era.
2021 Conference Panels & Panelists
Opening: Ming Hsu Chen (Colorado Law), author of Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era in conversation with Hiroshi Motomura (UCLA School of Law)
Panel 1: Citizenship Theory Beyond Legal Status
Niambi Carter (Political Science, Howard University), Elizabeth Cohen (Political Science, Syracuse University), Allen Colbern (Political Science, Arizona State University), Amanda Frost (Washington College of Law).
Lunchtime Panel: Stories of Immigrants
Salvador Hernandez (Colorado State Director, Mi Familia Vota), Alan Sanchez (CU Alumni), Shiyan Zhang (CU Alumni).
Panel 2; Citizenship, Integration, and Belonging
Tomas Jimenez (Sociology, Stanford), Cristina Rodriguez (Yale Law School), Stella Burch Elias (University of Iowa College of Law), Shannon Gleeson (Labor Relations, Law & History, Cornell), Xóchitl Bada (Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago).
Panel 3: Noncitizens, Exclusion, and Enforcement
Adam Goodman (Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago), Rebecca Hamlin (Political Science, University of Massachusetts at Amherst), Laura Lunn (Detention Program Managing Attorney, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network), Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia (Penn State Law).