Tuesday, 5 December 2023 (18:00-19:30 CET) | Webinar
In the United States, where innocence is considered inseparable from the ideal of childhood, the treatment of migrant minors presents Americans with a harrowing exception. In spite of their tender age, noncitizen youth in recent years have faced family separation, prolonged detention, dangerous human smuggling, labor exploitation, and continuous threats to their educational access. These rights violations have effectively robbed them of their innocence and the privileges associated with modern childhood.
This talk reveals that these deprivations are part of a long history. By focusing on the migration of Mexican and Central American minors to the U.S. in the past century, the talk will trace how the U.S. began designing legal and policy tools to deprive impoverished migrant minors of their childhood at the very moment the U.S. began to codify the rights of childhood into law.
Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez
Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois Chicago. A social and legal historian of child migration, she is currently working on a book project that historicizes child-centered mechanisms and consequences of U.S. immigration exclusion. Her book manuscript is based on her quadruple-prize-winning doctoral dissertation, which she completed in 2021 at Columbia University. Her writing and research have appeared in national media outlets and peer-reviewed journals. Outside of academia, she has conducted research on child and family migration for the federal government and non-profits in the U.S. and Mexico.
Programme
17:55 | Log-in to Webinar |
18:00–18:10 | WELCOME AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY THE MODERATOR |
18:10–19:00 | 9th GLOBAL MIGRATION LECTURE Mexican and Central American Youth Migration and the Making of Childhood in the United States Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez University of Illinois Chicago |
19:00–19:30 | Q&A WITH THE AUDIENCE AND CONCLUDING REMARKS |
19:30 | END OF THE LECTURE |
