Join a stellar group of interdisciplinary scholars, artists, activists, and writers from UIC and beyond as we discuss migration—documented, undocumented, “voluntary,” and forced—in four sessions on the themes of labor, im/mobility, sanctuary, and displacement, and a keynote by MacArthur Fellow and author Valeria Luiselli.

Migration across national borders has long been a ubiquitous phenomenon in the world. And just as pervasive have been barriers to movement. This
symposium brings together a stellar group of interdisciplinary scholars, writers, activists, and artists from UIC and beyond to examine migration and displacement in the context of a world of walls and borders. We are particularly interested in exploring the repercussions for migrants of the restrictive, coercive, and unfree ways in which movement has been regulated in the world. We also want to examine how migrants
and their allies have dealt with and sought to mitigate the effects of such restrictive regulation. Finally, we discuss processes of displacement more generally—
linking migration to the long histories of displacement of racialized communities in the United States and the practices of containment through which they have experienced multiple forms of invisibilization and dispossession.