Engage Immigration

Welcome to Engage Immigration!

Immigration is a hot topic.  Public debates about immigration often involve extremist rhetoric and action. Given this present state, we believe that  community-based learning and research practices offer us the ability to recognize the humanity of all individuals, families, neighbors, and co-workers whose lives are influenced by immigration.

Engage Immigration offers a space for scholar-teachers from various disciplines to share and learn from each others’ use of community-based research and teaching/learning strategies that focus on issues falling under the broad umbrella of “immigration.” We hope this space will encourage interest in and collaboration on public scholarship that improves the reception of immigrants and refugees, while at the same time highlighting best practices for scholar-teachers—particularly those at liberal arts colleges—interested in both immigration and community engagement.

The ties that bind us, then, are simply our interest in immigration and our interest in community-based inquiry.  So if you are an educator who is interested in community-based learning, teaching, and research practices revolving around immigration, engageimmigration.org is for you.

More details?

Thanks to a grant from the ACM (Associated Colleges of the Midwest), during the 2017-2018 school year we will participate in four video discussions regarding our past and present community based learning and research experiences.  These discussions will include conversations about both triumphs and pitfalls in on-campus, domestic off-campus, and international off-campus study.  We will (of course) blog on engageimmigration.org about these conversations!  

Additionally, in June 2018 we will host a conference open to all ACM faculty in Northfield, Minnesota to share more information about the lessons we have gleaned throughout the year, hear from a leading national expert, and hopefully learn more from you too.  Please plan on joining us!  (For faculty members unable to attend, though, we will post the conference proceedings on engageimmigration.org.)

Ultimately, we endeavor to learn from one another, propose to share our best collective insights and practices, and hope to develop a more visible network of community-based scholars interested in studying immigration in an ethical and effective manner.