From Surveillance to Solidarity: Teaching Amid the Immigration Crisis (Co-sponsored by Race, Gender, and Class Section)

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

Amid escalating anti-immigrant sentiment and state-sanctioned violence, sociologists are increasingly asked to ground their teaching in the threatening realities that shape the lives of immigrant and international students, as well as their own. The classroom can feel like one of the most precarious spaces where lectures, discussions, and even syllabi can be recorded, circulated, and weaponized by hostile actors or law enforcement. Yet, as Chandra Mohanty (1989) reminds us, the classroom is also a “practice of liberation”, a space to collectively address fear, care for one another, and cultivate critical understanding of the social forces behind immigration policies and xenophobic narratives. These dynamics are deeply intertwined with race, gender, class, and global inequalities, as well as economic anxieties surrounding unemployment and national security. This session invites educators, scholars, and activists to share pedagogical strategies that navigate these tensions: How can we address, or fail to address, executive orders, ICE actions, and protests that can directly affect the lives of students and instructors? How might we transform the classroom from a site of surveillance and anxiety into a space of solidarity, healing, and collective resistance?

Sub Unit

• Teaching and Learning in Sociology Section / From Surveillance to Solidarity: Teaching Amid the Immigration Crisis (Co-sponsored by Race, Gender, and Class Section)

Cosponsor

• Race, Gender, and Class Section

Presider

• Jinsun Yang, University of Oregon

Individual Presentations

• Building Solidarity in an Immigration Crisis: The Power of Connecting the Classroom and the Community - Erika Busse, Macalester College

• Solidarity in Migration Research and the Politics of Knowledge Production - Ahmed Hamila, University of Montreal

• Teaching Immigration in an Era of Surveillance: Civil Discourse, Narrative Inquiry, COIL as Practices of Liberation - Danielle V. Schoon, The Ohio State University

• Teaching Sexual Citizenship: An Initial Map for Integration of S/GBV Prevention into the Sociology Classroom - Samantha Leonard, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Katie Holstein Mercer, University of Colorado-Boulder; Abigail Eiler, University of Michigan; Lisa Fedina; Sandra R. Levitsky, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Michelle Munro-Kramer; Richard Tolman

Session Organizer

• Sadie Pendaz-Foster, Inver Hills Community College