Further Information and registration forms
We Thought It Would be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America
28 April 2025, 16:00-17:30 (CET)
Blair Sackett, American University, and Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania
Upon arrival to the United States, resettled refugees receive limited, yet valuable institutional supports: help from case workers, eligibility for government benefits, and a legal status that enables participation in American institutions. But, refugees quickly find that while the United States offers opportunities, it also is a land of inequality. As they start their new lives, they encounter crucial obstacles. Based on intensive family observations of four Congolese refugee families in Philadelphia as well as in-depth interviews with a total of 44 Congolese refugee families and 35 aid workers and volunteers, this talk highlights how the very institutions designed to help refugees (and other Americans) can derail their progress. Some refugees were able to overcome obstacles with help from cultural brokers and institutional insiders to achieve key markers of upward mobility: buying houses and sending their children to college. Others were stalled. Our findings show how routine hurdles and “knots” families encounter in institutions help to create economic inequality, as well as the policy interventions which could reduce these challenges.
Bios:
Blair Sackett is a Research Fellow at the Immigration Lab at American University. Her research examines the intersection of social inequality and forced migration, funded by the Fulbright-Hays Program and U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships. She is co-author, with Annette Lareau, of We Thought It Would be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America with University of California Press.
Annette Lareau is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of the award-winning books Unequal Childhoods, Home Advantage, and Listening to People. With Maria Luisa Mendez and Mike Savage, she is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Global Elites. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews of 83 racially-diverse wealthy families, she is currently writing a book on wealthy families.
Registration (until 4.4.25, 12:00 pm)
Affective Nationalism in a Conflict-Affected Society: Pedagogical, Political and Methodological Implications
09 May 2025, 10:00-11:30 (CET)
Michalinos Zembylas, Open University of Cyprus
The purpose of this talk is to show how teachers understand the role of affects and emotions in manifestations of the nation and nationalism in schools. In particular, the presentation examines how teachers’ political orientations—conservative or progressive—are entangled with their understandings of ‘affective nationalism.’ To do so, I use data from an exploratory qualitative study with 21 Greek-Cypriot primary and secondary school teachers, who were interviewed about their understandings of nationalism, affect and school practices in the context of ethnically divided Cyprus. The longstanding Cyprus conflict fuels intense national feelings that are manifested in school commemorations, practices, and policies, hence the study explores the extent to which teachers understand these manifestations as affective nationalism. The findings show that teachers’ political orientations are intertwined with how teachers view and evaluate nationalism and its affective dimensions. The analysis provides insights into the different pedagogical and political visions that compete at the intersections of affect, nation, and nationalism in schools.
