Announcing Fellowships in Immigration Studies
The Howard Samuels Center,
the Center for Urban Research,
and the Ralph Bunche
Institute for International Studies in collaboration with the Ph.D.
Program in Political Science, offered two fellowships awarded to incoming
students for the 2006-2007 academic year. The fellowships were integral
to the realization of a newly established joint-center cooperative endeavor
entitled The Global Dimensions of Local Change: A Research Program
in Migration, Political Mobilization, and Transnational Relations in the
U.S.
Given that one out of five residents of America is an immigrant or the
child of an immigrant, it is clear that the global dimensions of local
change will have an enormous impact on the evolution of American society.
Basic questions about membership, citizenship, nationality, and what it
means to be an "American" are being debated by newcomers and native born
citizens alike. The question central to the project was how do advanced
industrial societies incorporate or exclude these expanding immigrant
groups.
This project explored how the pre-migration political experiences and connections and the political and economic impetuses for migration of particular immigrant groups affected how they become involved in local politics and contribute to both the vitality of civil society and policy formation in the U.S. and in home countries.