The Refugee Cities Working Group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University, presents an interdisciplinary public symposium, “Refugee Cities: Urban Dimensions of Forced Displacement.”
The Refugee Cities Working Group’s concerns lie at the intersection of urban studies on the one hand and, on the other, the humanistic and social justice-oriented study of the mass movement of people fleeing violence, war, and forced removal. This symposium will focus on the impact of refugees on cities and urban processes, both in the present moment and as a historical phenomenon.
A keynote lecture will take place on the evening of Thursday, April 27, with all other presentations to be scheduled throughout the day on Friday, April 28. All events will take place in person at the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, New York.
RSVP HERE
Please use the directions found here to access the Heyman Center.
PROGRAM
April 27, 6:15 pm
KEYNOTE:
Miriam Ticktin, Department of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Borders and Commoning: The Struggle over Political Imagination
April 28
PANEL ONE 10:15 - 12:00 pm
Liu Xuan, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, Columbia University “Lineage and Patronage: Dual Identities of the Refugees in Early China, c. 770-476 BCE”
Amy Leia McLachlan, Field Museum (Chicago) “Between the Seven Worlds: curing and cosmological migration with Uitoto desplazados”
Helal Mohammed Khan, University of Notre Dame “Peace in Refugee Cities? Lessons from Resettled Rohingya Refugees in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Fort Wayne”
Subhasree Ghosh, Asutosh College (University of Calcutta, India) “Whose city? The Refugees, The Locals and the Changing Dynamics of the Urban Landscape of Post-Partition Calcutta”
Comment by A. George Bajalia, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Wesleyan University
LUNCH 12 - 1 pm
PANEL TWO 1 - 2:45 pm
Maureen Abi-Ghanem, Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation "Between global humanitarian policy & local implementation: On the socio-spatial protection of urban refugees in Beirut, Lebanon"
Bailey Miller, Columbia University; Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) “Rhythms of Cement: Displaced Syrian Construction Workers in Modern-day Beirut”
Matthew DeMaio, The George Washington University, Department of Anthropology
"It Only Lacked a University”: The Urban Identity of Damascus’s Yarmouk Refugee Camp"
Nadia Latif, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
“Urbanization and Multiple Migrations: The Social Production of Burj al-Barajneh Refugee Camp”
Comment by Nora Akawi, Assistant Professor of Architecture, The Cooper Union
CLOSING ROUNDTABLE, 2:45 - 3:30 pm:
Amy Chazkel (Department of History, Columbia University)
Bahia Munem (Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University)
Fanny García (Researcher, oral historian and educator)
Jorge Rodríguez Solórzano (Department of Anthropology, Columbia University)