Summer Session 2008: Sunday, July 27 – Wednesday, July 30
Itinerary
Sunday, July 27
6 p.m.
Reception with Faculty
Program Overview
7 p.m.
Dinner on Grand Avenue
Monday, July 28
8 a.m.
Breakfast in the Campus Center
Morning
Immigration History in the Twin Cities:
Exploring the Neighborhoods
Paul Schadewald, Associate Director,
Civic Engagement Center
Immigrants helped build the Twin Cities and continue to transform its physical, cultural, and social landscapes. This bus tour will explore key neighborhoods in understanding individuals and communities who found a home in the Twin Cities and in turn have helped shape this place. Stops will include the West Side Flats of St. Paul, once a first destination for immigrants and home to an historic Mexican American community; Lake Street in Minneapolis, a commercial corridor revitalized through recent immigration; and Cedar-Riverside, once a Scandinavian neighborhood and now home to a large Somali American community. We will enjoy lunch along the way.
1:30–2:45 p.m.
Immigration Dynamics:
Asking Better Questions
Chuck Green, Professor Emeritus
of Political Science
Movement of ideas, people, politics, and problems is a perennial quandary that also presents fresh opportunities for thought and action. Together, we will attempt to deepen perspectives, analyses, and assessments of the complex challenges of immigration globally, regionally, nationally, and locally. This session will feature both general explorations and specific strategic exercises.
3:15–4:30 p.m.
Immigration by the Numbers
Danny Kaplan, DeWitt Wallace Professor
of Mathematics & Computer Science
Some of the central issues in the immigration debate are quantitative. Are illegal immigrants drawing down public resources or contributing to them? Do illegal immigrants compete with low-wage American workers or do they take jobs that Americans don’t want? At an even more basic level we might ask simply: Is the U.S. population too big or too small? We’ll examine these questions, drawing on some of the topics introduced in Macalester’s new “quantitative thinking” curriculum.
4:30–5:30 p.m.
Discussion and Reception
6 p.m.
Dinner on Your Own
Evening
Excursion (optional)
Tuesday, July 29
8 a.m.
Breakfast in the Campus Center
9–10:15 a.m.
Immigration & Labor Markets
in North America
Raymond Robertson, Associate Professor
of Economics
Does U.S. border enforcement protect U.S. workers? Do migrants lower U.S. wages? What are some of the economic effects of migration on labor markets? In this session we will briefly discuss how academic economists think about migrants and their effect on workers, and then we will review the evidence from significant economic studies in the area using actual border enforcement data and references to Al Pacino’s Scarface.
10:45 a.m.– Noon
Assimilation & Multiculturalism
Dan Trudeau, Assistant Professor
of Geography
Immigrants have conventionally settled in ethnic enclaves, and geographers have studied assimilation as a process of immigrants moving out of enclaves, dispersing throughout a city, and acquiring characteristics of the host society. Today, scholars are re-evaluating the relationship of immigrants’ residential situation to the process of assimilation. For instance, contemporary transportation and communication technology mean that immigrants need not settle in concentrated areas in order for the animation of ethnic community to take place. The creation of ethnic community across a dispersed settlement pattern also raises questions about where policies of multiculturalism take on importance in American society. We will explore these questions using a case study of an immigrant community in the Twin Cities.
Noon
Lunch on Campus
1:30–2:45 p.m.
The Small Boat Around the
World:
Chinese Migrants &
Immigrants in the Global
Economy & Environment
Wang Ping, Associate Professor of English
There are 250 million migrant workers in China, all of them from the countryside, working on construction sites, in hotels, restaurants, massage salons, and most of all, in factories that make goods to be consumed by the world. Some crossed the sea to seek fortunes in Europe and United States. Such massive labor flow has made deep impacts on economies (local and international), social infrastructures, and ecological and cultural environments, changing social, political, and cultural landscapes both in China and abroad.
3:15–4:30 p.m.
Looking for Asian America
Wing Young Huie
Wing Young Huie is an award-winning photographer who has received international attention for his many projects that document the changing cultural landscape of his home state, Minnesota. Wing’s most recent project, “9 Months in America: An Ethnocentric Tour,” presents a post 9/11 America—a place where Asians, particularly Chinese, happen to be in the majority. This ambitious, cross-country odyssey frames the complexity, nuance, appropriation, humor, contradictions, and surprises of American life in our time.
4:30 p.m.
Reception,
Lingering Questions
6:30 p.m.
Dinner Together
Off Campus
Wednesday, July 30
8 a.m.
Breakfast in the Campus Center
9–11 a.m.
Debating Immigration Policy
Adrienne Christiansen, Associate Professor
of Political Science
Debaters have long believed that the value of an idea can best be tested by challenging it, in the hope that “truth” may arise from the collision. In this final session, we will build upon what we have learned about immigration policy by debating the resolution “Significant changes to U.S. immigration policy would, on the whole, be beneficial.” We will use a modified Oxford-style format with kick-off debaters and lots of points raised from the floor. As an audience member, you will move around the room to demonstrate your agreement or disagreement with arguments at the time you hear them. We will end with a formal division of the house in which everyone votes on their final assessment of the resolution.
11 a.m.
Final Wrap-Up, Adjourn