Elizabeth Cullen Dunn (Indiana University Bloomington) is Professor of Geography at Indiana University. Her current work focuses on refugees and labor. She has worked on forced migration and humanitarian aid, which resulted in her book, No Path Home: Humanitarian Camps and the Grief of Displacement. Her first book, Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business and the Remaking of Labor, focused on blue collar workers in the food industry during the transition from state socialism.
Please join us for the fourth talk of the 2020 /21 Fall Edition of the American Studies Colloquium Series.
We are honored to host a Zoom lecture from Elizabeth Cullen Dunn (Indiana University Bloomington) presenting her talk: Refugees and Racial Capitalism: What “Integration” in the US Labor Market Means?
Abstract: Refugee resettlement has long been seen as a purely humanitarian act. When refugees are “integrated” into the labor market, it is seen as a tool to promote values such as self-sufficiency and dignity. But refugee labor is often needed by host countries, and refugees are often inserted into industries where they are tasked with jobs host country nationals refuse to do. Using the example of the American meatpacking industry, which relies heavily on refugees resettled by the US Department of State, I discuss why refugees were simultaneously deemed “essential” and “prohibited” during the COVID-19 epidemic. This paradox, in which refugees are both indispensable and stigmatized, is used to racialize and devalue their labor, creating ethnic enclaves in the labor market that simultaneously permit them to work and trap them in dangerous, underpaid jobs.
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Wydarzenie można zaliczyć w ramach OSA:
- Opiekun: Joanna Kulpińska
- Liczba godzin OSA: 2h
- Forma zaliczenia: notatka ze spotkania w jęz. polskim lub angielskim przesłana do Opiekuna (najpóźniej do 2 tygodni po spotkaniu, min. 500 znaków)