10-11:15 A.M. (ET)
Panel I • The Role of Migration Scholarship at a Time of Multiple Crises

This plenary panel of leading scholars explored the role, promise, and course of migration research and scholarship at a time of multiple crises. It particularly examined the importance of scholarship that crosses disciplines, competencies, and areas of expertise.

MODERATOR
Jamie Winders
Professor, Geography and the Environment
Director, Autonomous Systems Policy Institute
Syracuse University
Editor
International Migration Review

SPEAKERS
Oliver Bakewell
Senior Lecturer
Global Development Institute
University of Manchester

Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes
Professor of Economics
University of California, Merced

Ali R. Chaudhary
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Faculty Associate, Rutgers Program on South Asian Studies and the Center for Security, Race & Rights
Rutgers University

Brenda S.A. Yeoh
Raffles Professor of Social Sciences, Department of Geography
Director, Humanities and Social Science Research Office of the Deputy President
National University of Singapore

11:30—12:45 p.m. (ET)
Panel II • Migration Policy in the Midst of Multiple Pandemics

This panel examined trends in international migration and migration-related policies in the context of pandemics of disease, racism, and violence. It examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related policies on migrants and refugees, drawing on a growing body of research on how pandemics affect marginalized communities. The intersection of the health pandemic and the pandemics of racism and violence also disproportionately affect persons of color, including migrants and refugees. This panel lifted up promising international, national, and local approaches to the immense challenges facing immigrants, refugees, and their communities of origin and destination. Panelists also discussed the role of immigrants and refugees in economic and social recovery.

MODERATOR
Susan Martin
Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emeritus School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University

SPEAKERS
Anne Richard
Former Assistant Secretary
Population, Refugees and Migration
U.S. State Department

Eskinder Negash
President
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
Former Director
Office of Refugee Resettlement

Paul Spiegel
Professor of the Practice and Director
Center for Humanitarian Health
Johns Hopkins University

Joseph Chamie
Former Research Director
Center for Migration Studies
Former Director
UN Population Division

Philip Martin
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Davis

2:30 – 3:45 pm (ET)
Panel III • The 2020 Election: An Administrative Agenda for Immigration and Refugee Reform

The US Presidential and Congressional election could have as profound an effect on the course of US immigration and refugee policy as any election in memory. This panel examined the potential immigration and refugee agenda of the Biden administration, with a particular focus on what the new administration should seek to achieve through administrative action in its first year. It also explored the challenges the new administration will face in enacting its agenda, and whether multiple national crises – public health, racial, economic, and immigration – will provide an opening and momentum for more generous and inclusive policies.

MODERATOR
Daniela Alulema
Director of Programs
Center for Migration Studies

SPEAKERS
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
University Professor
Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility
The New School

Donald Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Charles Wheeler
Director of Training and Legal Support
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.

Wendy Young
President
Kids in Need of Defense

Alexander Aleinikoff
University Professor and Director
Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility
The New School

Alexander Aleinikoff is University Professor and Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School. Mr. Aleinikoff has written widely in the areas of immigration and refugee law and policy, transnational law, citizenship, race, and constitutional law. His co-authored book with Leah Zamore, The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime, was published by Stanford University Press in 2019. He is the author of Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship (Harvard University Press 2002), and the co-author of leading legal casebooks on immigration law and forced migration. Mr. Aleinikoff served as United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees (2010-15) and was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he also served as Dean and Executive Vice President of Georgetown University. From 1994 to 1997, he served as the general counsel, and then executive associate commissioner for programs, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and taught at the University of Michigan Law School from 1981 to 1997. Mr. Aleinikoff received his J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.

Daniela Alulema
Director of Programs
Center for Migration Studies

Daniela Alulema is director of programs at the Center for Migration Studies (CMS). Ms. Alulema has coordinated research projects on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program implementation, statelessness, and the impact of deportation on US families and communities. In 2015, she received her Master of Science in the Urban Policy Analysis and Management Program at The New School. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in accounting from Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). She currently serves as a board member in the New York State Youth Leadership Council, an undocumented-led organization that seeks to empower youth to create change in their communities.

Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes
Professor of Economics
University of California, Merced

Dr. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes is professor of economics at University of California, Merced, a Research Fellow at CReAM, FEDEA, GLO and IZA, an advisory committee member of the Americas Center Advisory Council at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Western Representative in the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) since 2015.  Her areas of interest include labor economics, international migration, immigration policy and remittances. Her work has been funded by the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), the Hewlett Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, among other agencies.  She was the 2013-2014 Border Fulbright García-Robles Scholar, Department Chair at San Diego State University between 2015 and 2018, President of the American Society of Hispanic Economists (ASHE) in 2014, and has held visiting positions at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, the Center for Human Resource at Ohio State University, the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Oliver Bakewell
Senior Lecturer, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

Oliver Bakewell is a Senior Lecturer in Migration Studies at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His work focuses on the intersections between migration and mobility and processes of development and change, with an empirical focus on migration within Africa. He leads research on migration and development for the Research and Evidence Facility of the EU Trust Fund for Africa (Horn of Africa). Prior to joining GDI, he was one of the founding members of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford, where he worked for over ten years. He has spent many years working with migrants and refugees both as a researcher and as a practitioner with a range of development and humanitarian NGOs. He holds a PhD and MSc in Development Studies from the University of Bath and a BA in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Joseph Chamie
Former Research Director
Center for Migration Studies
Former Director
UN Population Division

Joseph Chamie is a former Director of the United Nations Population Division. He worked at the United Nations, both overseas and at headquarters, for close to a quarter century. After the United Nations, he served for seven years as Director of Research at the Center for Migration Studies, New York. In addition to completing numerous studies issued under United Nations authorship, he has also written studies in his own name in such areas as fertility, population estimates and projections, aging, international migration, and population and development policy.

Ali Chaudhary
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Faculty Associate, Rutgers Program on South Asian Studies and the Center for Security, Race & Rights, Rutgers University

Ali R, Chaudhary is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick-NJ. He is also a research affiliate of the International Migration Institute (University of Amsterdam) and a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, & Rights. Before coming to Rutgers, Ali was a Marie Curie ITN fellow at the University of Oxford Department of International Development and Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College-Oxford. Dr. Chaudhary’s primary areas of research include the race-migration nexus, immigrant civic engagement, immigrant organizations, and the sociology of music. His prior and current work interrogates the social constructions and consequences of ascriptive categories (e.g. race, nationality, ethnicity, nativity, etc.) for immigrants and ethnoracial minority groups in North America and Europe. His newest project seeks to bridge the study of race, migration, and culture by investigating how ascriptive boundaries and categories are activated and reinforced in the production, consumption, and performance of popular music in the United States. His scholarship appears in International Migration Review, Global Networks, Migration Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Sociological Quarterly, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, among others.

Donald Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Donald M. Kerwin, Jr. has directed the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) since September 2011. He previously worked for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) between 1992 and 2008, serving as its Executive Director (ED) for 15 years and its interim ED for six months in late 2012 and early 2013. Upon his arrival at CLINIC in 1992, Mr. Kerwin coordinated CLINIC’s political asylum project for Haitians. CLINIC, a subsidiary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), is a public interest legal corporation that supports a national network of several hundred charitable legal programs for immigrants. Between 2008 and 2011, Mr. Kerwin served as Vice-President for Programs at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), where he wrote on immigration, labor standards, and refugee policy issues. He has also served as an associate fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center where he co-directed Woodstock’s Theology of Migration Project; a non-resident senior fellow at MPI; a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Immigration Task Force; a board member for Jesuit Refugee Services-USA, the Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, and the Border Network for Human Rights; an advisor to the USCCB Committee on Migration; and a member of numerous advisory groups. Mr. Kerwin writes and speaks extensively on immigration policy, refugee protection, access to justice, national security, and other issues.

Phillip Martin
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Davis

Philip Martin is Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California-Davis, editor of Rural Migration News, and the author of numerous research publications on migration and farm labor. His most recent book is Merchants of Labor: Recruiters and International Labor Migration. 2017. Oxford University Press. 

Susan Martin
Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emeritus School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University

Susan Martin is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emerita in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  She was the founder and director of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration. She also chairs the Thematic Working Group on Environmental Change and Migration for the Knowledge Partnership in Migration and Development (KNOMAD) at the World Bank. Previously, Dr. Martin was the Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which was mandated by statute to advise the President and Congress on U.S. immigration and refugee policy. She received her PhD in the History of American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Martin has authored or edited a dozen books and numerous articles and book chapters.  A second updated edition of her book,  A Nation of Immigrants, will be published by Cambridge University Press in April 2021. She serves on the boards of the Center for Migration Studies and Jesuit Refugee Service USA as well as the advisory councils of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Center for Disaster Philanthropy, and Douglass College, Rutgers University. She is also a member of the International Organization for Migration’s Migration Research and Publishing High-Level Advisors group.

Eskinder Negash
President, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
Former Director, Office of Refugee Resettlement

Eskinder Negash is President and CEO of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and  Immigrants (USCRI). Mr. Negash is a recognized senior executive leader and brings nearly 40 years of proven non-profit management experience on behalf of refugees and immigrants. Prior to joining USCRI, he served from 2009-2015 as Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Under Negash’s leadership, ORR served more than 850,000 people during his six years of service. Prior to his appointment by the Obama Administration, Mr. Negash served as the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of USCRI for seven years. He also was the Vice

President and Chief Administrative Officer of the International Institute of Los Angeles for 15 years. Mr. Negash served as a board member with several non-profit organizations, including two years as Chair of the Joint Voluntary Agencies Committee of California, Chair of the California State Refugee Advisory Council, and Board Member of the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). In 2009, Mr. Negash received an “Outstanding American By Choice” award from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security, which recognizes naturalized U.S. citizens who have made significant contributions to both their community and their adopted country. In 2010, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) honored Mr. Negash as one of ten distinguished men and women whose stories of hope and transformation epitomize the refugee journey.

Anne Richard
Former Assistant Secretary
Population, Refugees and Migration
US State Department

Anne C. Richard served as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration in the Obama Administration (2012-2017).  Since leaving government in January 2017, she has lectured at a number of universities including the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration (part of the Walsh School of Foreign Service), Hamilton College, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House.  Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Ms. Richard was the vice president of government relations and advocacy for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).  Earlier in her career, she served in other senior positions at the State Department, Peace Corps Headquarters and the US Office of Management and Budget. She was an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relation and a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow.  Ms. Richard is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and has a Master’s degree in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago.

Paul Spiegel
Professor of the Practice and Director
Center for Humanitarian Health, Johns Hopkins University

Paul Spiegel, a Canadian physician by training, is internationally recognized for his research on preventing and responding to humanitarian emergencies, with a focus on refugee crises. Dr. Spiegel is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and Professor of Practise in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). Before JHSPH, Dr. Spiegel was Deputy Director and Chief of Public Health at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He previously worked as a Medical Epidemiologist in the International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as a Medical Coordinator with Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde in refugee emergencies, as well as a consultant for numerous international organizations. Dr. Spiegel was the first Chair of the Funding Committee for Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (2013-2018). Dr. Spiegel has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles on humanitarian health and migration. He has served as a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission for Migration and Health and the  Lancet Commission on Syria. He is currently co-chair of Lancet Migration.

Charles Wheeler
Director of Training, Litigation and Support
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.

Charles Wheeler directs the Training and Legal Support section for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) in Oakland, CA. Mr. Wheeler is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland School of Law and has practiced and taught immigration law for four decades. Prior to working for CLINIC, Mr. Wheeler directed the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. He has authored four books on various aspects of immigration law and is noted for his expertise in family-based immigration. He is a member of the state bars of California, Colorado, and Maryland.

Jamie Winders
Professor, Geography and the Environment
Director, Autonomous Systems Policy Institute
Syracuse University
Editor
International Migration Review

Jamie Winders is Professor of Geography and Director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at Syracuse University. She was appointed editor of the International Migration Review, starting November 2017. Dr. Winders specializes in cultural and social geography and international migration. She co-edited The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural Geography and published Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging with Russell Sage in 2013. She holds a PhD from the University of Kentucky.

Brenda S.A.Yeoh
Raffles Professor of Social Sciences
Department of Geography
Director
Humanities and Social Science Research Office of the Deputy President
National University of Singapore

Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Raffles Professor of Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities, and gender and transnational migration in Asia.

Wendy Young
President
Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)

Wendy has led KIND since 2009, and brings extensive immigration policy experience to the organization. Prior to KIND, she served as Chief Counsel on Immigration Policy in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. She held prior immigration policy positions with organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Women’s Refugee Commission, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the National Council of La Raza. She has also written numerous articles, reports and cutting-edge op-eds on the plight of unaccompanied children. Wendy has received a number of awards and honors for her work on immigration rights including: 2017 Williams College Bicentennial Medal Award; 2016 Keepers of the American Dream Honoree by the National Immigration Forum; Women Inspiring Change 2015 Honoree at Harvard Law School’s 2nd Annual International Women’s Day Celebration; Foreign Policy’s Leading Global Thinker of 2014; Nominated as one of two NGO representatives to participate in Seminar XXI Program on U.S. Foreign Policy by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and National Defense University (2002); Honored by Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center for work on behalf of women and children detainees (2002); Child Advocacy National Certification of Recognition, American Bar Association, in recognition of contributions advancing the welfare of children (2001); Human Rights Award, American Immigration Lawyers Association, in recognition of the work of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children on behalf of women and child asylum seekers (1999). Wendy earned a joint law degree and master’s degree in international relations from American University in Washington, DC, and a bachelor’s degree from Williams College in Massachusetts.