cfp: “Race and Immigration in the American City"

Call for Papers
University of Chicago
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture

“Race and Immigration in the American City: New Perspectives on 21st century Intergroup Relations”

May 20, 2011

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago solicits paper proposals for a day-long conference to be held on the Chicago campus on May 20, 2011, on “Race and Immigration in the American City: New Perspectives on 21st century Intergroup Relations.” Our keynote speaker will be Professor Jennifer Lee of the sociology department at the University of California, Irvine.

“Race and Immigration in the American City” seeks to explore themes of intergroup dynamics within multi-racial and multi-ethnic contexts across a range of urban arenas. As the post-1964 immigration wave has transformed the face of American cities, these new polyglot demographics introduce new forms, experiences, and dynamics of intergroup relations. How newcomers “fit
into” contemporary contexts of urban daily life, how current residents receive them, and how structural factors may influence these encounters prompt a number of avenues of analytic examination that help shed light on our contemporary experience of race and immigration in the American city.

Of particular interest are the dynamics that play out between African Americans and Latinos. Although racially and ethnically diverse urban contexts are long the hallmark of the American urban experience, the persistence of racial inequality and racial consciousness starkly shapes the urban context into which today’s immigrants—the majority of whom are Latino and categorized as non-white by dominant racial ideology—arrive. A primary focus of scholarly attention has been on the competition effects that emerge between African Americans and Latinos under such circumstances, especially in the labor market. We welcome such inquiry but also encourage comparative examination of other modes of engagement between groups.

Conference papers might explore: other dimensions of difference that mediate race and nativity, such as gender or class; the ways in which new configurations of racial and ethnic inequality have emerged in multiracial contexts; the ways in which new arrivals and/or prior residents adapt, contest, and reshape the experience of “race” in America; new forms of collaboration between groups; the persistence or shift in the “color line” given the ethnoracial diversity of
contemporary urban demographics. Substantively, we are interested in any number of topics that examine the contemporary urban condition such as employment, housing, neighborhood change, local politics, and social mobilization. Methodologically, the conference will emphasize comparative rather than group-specific research.

Paper proposals of two (2) pages maximum, plus a two (2) page curriculum vitae should be sent to Virginia Parks vparks@uchicago.edu and Ramón Gutiérrez rgutierrez@uchicago.edu by Friday, March 25, 2011.