RESEARCH General Education

ACCESS TO EDUCATION
Scholars to focus on effect of 'new immigration' on education

Andrea Lynn, Humanities & Social Sciences Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

4/1/03

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Most U.S. educators believe that equality in education and citizenship rights are necessary elements for a vital and working democracy.

Yet, because of the recent influx of immigrants to the United States, equality in education and citizenship rights are non-existent for a growing number of the nation’s school-age residents, and "the nation’s schools at all levels have become key sites where future citizens are being included or excluded, made and unmade."

So says Rosalinda B. Barrera, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The "New Immigration," which began in the 1960s and intensified in the 1990s, primarily consists of Latinos and Asians, and the influx is to all parts of the United States, with much increased movement to the Midwest and the South, Barrera says. In fact, Illinois now ranks fourth or fifth in terms of the number of immigrants coming to the United States.

Which is one reason why the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the University of Illinois is convening a two-day symposium to explore how U.S. public education at the beginning of the 21st century "can better reflect the workings of a multiracial democracy in the context of the new immigration, a significant demographic trend of the past three decades, particularly through issues of access to quality education for all," wrote the symposium organizers, Barrera and Alejandro Lugo, a professor of anthropology at Illinois.

The symposium, "Educational Democracy, Citizenship and the New Immigration," will be held April 11-12. The event, the center’s first symposium since it was established less than a year ago, is free and open to the public.

Each day of the symposium will include a keynote address and two panel sessions with multiple presenters and discussants, followed by a question-and-answer period.

Keynote speakers and their topics are Susanne Jonas, Latin American and Latino studies, University of California Santa Cruz, "Immigrant Rights and Legalization Strategies in the Shadow of the National Security State," and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Harvard Immigration Project, Harvard University, "Global Moves, Migration, Education, Utopia and Dystopia."

Other presenters and presentations include Joseph (Jay) S. Stauss, director, American Indian studies, University of Arizona, on "Aspirations for Places of Difference: The Creative Tension Between American Indian Sovereignty and Democracy"; and Mary Romero, School of Justice Studies, Arizona State University, on " ‘Alien’ Status Among Chicana/o Faculty in Higher Education."