Preliminary Programme

Tue 26 February
    14.15
    16.30

Wed 27 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Thu 28 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Fri 29 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 1 March
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

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Tuesday 26 February 2008 16.30
H-2 ETH38 Emigration, immigration and identity
Room 1.1
Network: Ethnicity and Migration Chair: Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga
Organizers: - Discussant: Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga
Daniel Killoren : Movement, Settlement and the Negotiation of Citizenship: Migrant Networks in the 19th Century U.S./Mexico Borderland
The Sonoran region of southern Arizona and northern Mexico is defined by a set of environmental factors that transcend the overlaid international boundaries. The movement of individuals and families in this region is characterized by a need for survival and subsistence. The many cultured backgrounds of the people who have ... (Show more)
The Sonoran region of southern Arizona and northern Mexico is defined by a set of environmental factors that transcend the overlaid international boundaries. The movement of individuals and families in this region is characterized by a need for survival and subsistence. The many cultured backgrounds of the people who have historically existed in this migratory region created a unique mixing of institutions and community structures that is still visible today. The patterns of settlement and mobility were determined by land tenure systems from Mexico and the United States. The establishment of economic, social, and cultural networks between migrants formed the basis for the institutional formation of cities on both sides of the border. Individual life narratives demonstrate that migrants charted their life courses based on opportunities on either side of the border, but were also keenly aware of the entitlements of citizenship and the resulting access to institutions. This paper will seek to answer several key questions including: what role did migrant mobility play in defining the cultural, social and economic systems of the region? How did farming practices and forms of communal living influence the agricultural and economic development of the region? How did competing definitions of race, gender and class interact to form the basis of social hierarchies in the newly established settlements of the region? This analysis of the regional characteristics of mobility and the impact of environmental factors in defining migratory regions can be applied to others parts of the world with similar arid environments. (Show less)

Daniel Marcos : The Capelinhos Volcano and the Azorean Immigration to the USA (1958-1965)
From September, 1957 to October, 1958 an offshore volcano, near Fayal Island, has erupted. The big quantity of ashes and dust expelled provoked an immediate impact on the island economy, fundamentally based on farming. However, this wasn’t the only problem the Fayal populations had to deal with. In May 1958 ... (Show more)
From September, 1957 to October, 1958 an offshore volcano, near Fayal Island, has erupted. The big quantity of ashes and dust expelled provoked an immediate impact on the island economy, fundamentally based on farming. However, this wasn’t the only problem the Fayal populations had to deal with. In May 1958 a huge earthquake has stroke the same island destroying almost a thousand of inhabitant’s houses.
Under an enormous demographic pressure and with almost one third of the lands becoming infertile after the eruption, the Portuguese government tried to promote the emigration of twenty Azorean families to the Portuguese colonies in Africa. However, since the nineteenth century, the Azores Archipelago had a natural trend of mass migration to the “New World” lands, namely, Brazil, the United States and the Hawaii. As a result of this, the Portuguese colony in the United States started a solidarity movement to help their Azorean fellow countrymen that led to the approval of two Bills, by the American Congress, that enable the entrance, in the USA, of almost 2.000 Azorean families. The first and most important Bill became known as the Kennedy-Pastore Act, because those were the two main sponsors of that legislative process: Senators John Kennedy, from Massachusetts and John Pastore, from Rhode Island.
The major objective of this paper is to analyze and describe national and international context that enable the entrance of 2.000 Azorean families in the USA in a period where restrictive quotas of immigration laws were instituted. We shall understand what kind of pressures and lobbies were behind the approval of the Azorean refugees’ acts and what was Senators John Pastore (RI) and John Kennedy (MA) role on the legislation process. On the other hand, we aim to understand the impact of the mass immigration enabled after 1958 for the Portuguese-American relations. (Show less)

Miriam Debieux Rosa, Taeco Carignato & Sandra Berta : Immigrants, migrants and refugees and the wandering condition of the desire
The present work aims to deduce information about the function of successive moves of people at the Migrants House. The Migrants House was founded in São Paulo, Brazil in 1974 as a civil society entity called Volunteer Association for Migrants Integration (AVIM) – designed to provide assistance to Brazilian migrants. ... (Show more)
The present work aims to deduce information about the function of successive moves of people at the Migrants House. The Migrants House was founded in São Paulo, Brazil in 1974 as a civil society entity called Volunteer Association for Migrants Integration (AVIM) – designed to provide assistance to Brazilian migrants. Currently, it maintains partnerships with São Paulo City Hall and with Cáritas, an organization which, by its turn, has set up partnerships with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees- ACNUR. The latter keeps protecting Brazilian refugees and migrants, particularly from Colombian and African, besides immigrants, specially Latin Americans who find difficulty in their process of moving.
A reflection is conducted on the demand of recurring migratory moves of the people at the Migrants House, counterpointed by the appeals for recognition and the search of a social locus that serves as basis for their identity. Identify issues and the wish for recognition in Immigration are approached through the two ways according to which immigrants deal with new cultures: the unexamined adoption of symbolic cultural references or its rejection. Identity suspension resulting from immigration encompasses a number of aspects such as the softening of laws and values that would favor the desiring dimension, but which make it difficult to mark from where they can form bonds with the other. Furthermore, identity shocks may generate narcissistic disturbances. Though they can be libertarian, they can also be disorienting. The identity issue, allied with housing and work issues, make immigrants fragile and facilitate the acceptance of the minimum for subsistence, which may take the shape of conformism and submission.
The difficulty locating oneself in the world and the dimension of the lost occupy a primordial place and can promote effects of uprooting or deterritorializaton. Vis-à-vis what has been lost, there is a first moment that can be thought of as referring to the concept of anguish followed by a silencing that impedes the transmission, necessary for the maintenance of a subjective history.
It is necessary to emphasize that immigration is a process that articulates social, political, economic and subjective motivations. The condition of being a migrant favors, undoubtedly,– and this is what has been observed– all sort of manipulations and abuses. Thus the relation with the new land will have the marks of those processes. Some migrations reveal the very move in search of diversity of for becoming the other, but migration concerns errancy as condemnation. The figure of the Wandering Jew, Ahashverus (Xerxes) is a metaphor of the excluded who, by imposition of the other, “will forever roam” .
The space at the Migrants House is revealed as special and subjectively strategic. It is verified that its user have appropriated themselves of this space in their own way. This work aimed to make word circulate in this differentiated space, where people from different cultures, classes and origins interact. (Show less)



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