Claiming Space in the “Birthplace of America:” Latin American Immigrants and Struggles for Belonging in Williamsburg, Virginia

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In this talk, Dr. Jennifer Bickham Mendez will chronicle a series of community-engaged research projects with and about Latin American immigrants, as they and their families have struggled to claim space and belonging in a variety of spheres of community life in Williamsburg, Virginia, including in the arena of healthcare and public services, housing, and public schools. Community-based, collaborative research with immigrant families as well as schools, service-providing agencies, and community organizations has generated critical insights regarding deeply-rooted forms of social exclusion and how marginalized groups confront, accommodate and, sometimes, push back against them. Long-term engagement with immigrants and their families in a site long understood as the “birthplace of a nation,” has raised critical questions regarding key assumptions in “immigration studies,” leading me, instead, to a framework for understanding immigrants’ lived experiences that foregrounds belonging, resilience and community-building.

Free and open to all! Reception to follow.

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