What the US Election Means for US-Canada Relations
November 17, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | Online
Speakers: Frédérick Gagnon, Christopher Sands, Irene Bloemraad
After one of the most closely-contested elections in recent US history, Joe Biden has defeated incumbent president Donald Trump to become the next President of the United States. What does a Biden administration mean for the future of US-Canada relations? Canadian Studies will host a special roundtable discussing the possible outcomes of a Biden presidency for bilateral relations and their impact on Canada.
Panelists will be Frédérick Gagnon, a professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal and a past Fulbright Chair and Sproul Fellow in the Canadian Studies Program; and Christopher Sands, director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. and a Canadian Studies board member. The discussion will be moderated by Canadian Studies director Irene Bloemraad.
Hildebrand Graduate Research Colloquium
October 20, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | Online
Speakers: Desirée Valadares, Martha Herrera-Lasso Gonzalez
Learn about the research Canadian Studies funds through our Edward Hildebrand Graduate Research Fellowships, as recipients present short overviews of their projects. Participating scholars are Desirée Valadares, ("Idling No More: Reading Japanese Canadian World War II Road Camps Alongside Specters of Indigeneity on the Hope-Princeton Highway in British Columbia, Canada") and Martha Herrera-Lasso Gonzalez ("Regionalizing NAFTA: Theaters of Translation in Mexico City and Quebec").
Social Movements and Legal Mobilisation in Times of Crisis: Migrant Farm Worker Rights in Canada
October 6, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | Online
Speaker: Vasanthi Venkatesh
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected migrant farm workers. Former Hildebrand Fellow Vasanthi Venkatesh, a professor of law at the University of Windsor specializing in social movements and immigration, gives context to the crisis by showing how the pandemic has overlaid itself onto existing systemic racial discrimination against migrant farm workers embedded in law and policy. She also shows how migrant farm worker advocates have responded to the crisis by exposing the racial capitalism of the Canadian agricultural economy, using radical narratives to challenge these systems.
Return: On Blackness and Belonging in North America
September 15, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | Online
Speaker: Debra Thompson
Debra Thompson, a McGill University professor and expert on race and ethnic politics, will explore the complex experience of Black people in North America, juxtaposing her deep, ancestral links to the United States with a parallel but at times competing national affinity with the land to which many enslaved Black Americans once fled: Canada. Through the analytical insights of black political thought, Prof. Thompson uses personal narrative to explore the boundaries of racial belonging and identify key facets of Canadian ideas about race and racism; to analyze the transnational nuances and contours of the African diaspora in North America; and ultimately, to think through what it means to be in a place, but not be of that place.
Professor Debra Thompson is an associate professor of political science at McGill University, specializing in race and ethnic politics. Born in Canada, she later moved to the United States, where she taught at several universities. Her award-winning book, The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge University Press, 2016) is a study of the political development of racial classifications on the national censuses of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. She is currently writing two book projects: the first explores the transnational dynamics of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the second, co-authored with Keith Banting (Queen's University) analyzes the puzzling persistence of racial inequality in Canada.
No Safe Country for Refugees? The Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement Before the Canadian Courts
September 1, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | Online
Speakers: Audrey Macklin, Leti Volpp, Irene Bloemraad
Until recently, certain asylum claimants who entered Canada were routinely returned to the United States under the Safe Third Country Agreement. However, in July Canada's Federal Court ordered the agreement suspended, asserting that the US is "not safe" for refugees due to the risk of imprisonment and other basic rights violations. Audrey Macklin, an expert in human rights law at the University of Toronto, joins Berkeley Law professor Leti Volpp to unpack the ruling and what it means for migrants and US-Canada relations. The conversation will be moderated by immigration scholar and Canadian Studies director Irene Bloemraad.
Student Research Panel
April 21, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | Online
Speakers: Boróka Bó, Fallon Burner
Learn about some of the fascinating student research Canadian Studies is fostering at UC Berkeley thanks to support from our donors. This live presentation will showcase projects from two recent fellowship recipients. Please RSVP at canada@berkeley.edu. If you require an accommodation for effective communication, please let us know with as much advance notice as possible.
"Good Time, Bad Time: Socioeconomic Status and the Cultural Repertoires of Time Scarcity in Retirement"
Boróka Bó, doctoral candidate in sociology and demography
We tend to think of retirement as a great equalizer when it comes to relief from the pernicious time scarcity characterizing the lives of many individuals in the labor force. Puzzlingly, this is not the case. Using established research, long-term participant observation, and in-depth interviews with Toronto residents, I show that socioeconomic characteristics are important determinants of retiree time scarcity. Neighborhood disadvantage gets under the skin via time exchanges that are forged by both neighborhood and peer network characteristics. For the advantaged, the experience of time scarcity is protective for well-being in later life, as it emerges from managing a relative abundance of choices. For the disadvantaged, the later life experience of time scarcity is shaped by cumulative inequality, further exacerbating inequalities in well-being. The final section of my talk offers an analysis and interpretation of my findings, putting retiree time scarcity in conversation with the broader literature on socioeconomic status and well-being.
"Healing Through Language: Revitalization in the Wendat Confederacy"
Fallon Burner, undergraduate history major
Language is at the core essence of identity. My honors thesis examines the history of the languages of the Wendat Confederacy (Huron), showing the vital role that language plays in the Indigenous community, how its history is tied to issues of erasure and survival, and the role that language revitalization projects have in addressing transgenerational trauma. The Wendat Confederacy straddles the US-Canada border with nations in Québec, Ontario/Michigan, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Distance and multiple language barriers provide challenges for language revitalizers.
There is a strong need in the field of history for narratives which are from an Indigenous perspective. This can be achieved through a methodology utilizing the languages themselves and oral histories. I spent the summer of 2019 conducting oral history interviews with Wendat and Wyandot(te) language revitalizers, in order to create an archive of Wendat perspectives on language revitalization. I also conducted archival research on the Wendake reserve in Québec, and had one-on-one language instruction in the Waⁿdat and Wendat languages. Part of my mission is to erase the erasure of Indigenous voices by contributing more Indigenous perspective primary sources to the historical narrative for future scholars.
Framing Deservingness in Canadian News Media
March 24, 2020 | 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. | Online
Speaker: Rebecca Wallace
Research on the framing of social assistance in Canadian media suggests that news coverage is "race-coded", whereby Indigenous and immigrant welfare recipients are frequently portrayed as more or less deserving than non-Indigenous, native-born Canadians across a number of deservingness criteria. What are the effects of these frames on public opinion toward social assistance recipients, and support for redistribution more generally? And how do these frame effects potentially differ based on the recipients assumed race or country of origin?
This presentation reports the results of a custom-designed framing experiment that aims to understand how news frames affect attitudes toward Indigenous and immigrant recipients of welfare. The findings indicate that while the frames can have a significant impact on perceptions of recipients deservingness, the effects are conditioned by the beneficiaries identity as an Indigenous or immigrant recipient. Results, implications, and future research will be discussed.
Rebecca Wallace received her Ph.D. in political studies at Queen's University. She holds a B.A.H. (with distinction) and an M.A. in political studies from the same institution. Rebecca's research focuses on Canadian politics, broadly examining welfare chauvinism toward different racial minority groups and its manifestation in Canadian news media. Rebecca is a doctoral fellow at the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations and a research assistant for the Canadian Opinion Research Archive, and held a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (2016-2019).
Shared Heuristics: How Organizational Culture Shapes Asylum Policy
March 10, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Nicholas A. R. Fraser
What explains cross-national variation in asylum recognition rates? Refugee policy is unique in that it is the only form of migration policy that is codified into international law. Moreover, the United Nations High Commissioner actively monitors and guides implementation across the world. However, in many countries, bureaucratic agencies dominate the quasi-judicial process through which asylum-seekers are granted protective status.
Using a mixed methods approach that includes interviews with bureaucrats and refugee advocates in a variety of western and non-western developed countries, Dr. Fraser places Canadian asylum policy in a comparative perspective. Challenging conventional political science explanations of asylum policy that focus on international norms, party politics, or institutional rules, he shows that how bureaucratic culture accounts for patterns of very high or low recognition rates in jurisdictions where decision-makers enjoy a high degree of autonomy.
Nicholas A. R. Fraser recently completed his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Toronto, specializing in comparative politics and public policy. He holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Calgary as well as M.A.s in political science from the University of British Columbia and Waseda University. His research has been funded by various research grants including the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship.
Knowledge Borders: Temporary Labor Mobility and the Canada-U.S. Border Region
March 3, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Kathrine Richardson
Key elements of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal with temporary labor mobility, and should ideally make the temporary movement of professionals easier across the border of all NAFTA countries. However, this is arguably not the case in emerging sectors such as high technology. Dr. Richardson's book, Knowledge Borders: Temporary Labor Mobility and the Canada-US Border Region, examines these issues within the context of recent literature on cross-border trade, economic clusters, and international labor mobility. She will discuss the dynamics of transitory immigration of "knowledge workers" along the North American west coast, focusing on Vancouver, Seattle, and the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area.
With particular attention given to the experiences and strategies of the high-tech firms that must move highly skilled workers across the Canada-US border, Knowledge Borders draws from 80 in-depth interviews with Canadian and US immigration officials, immigration attorneys and executives and professional staff of new technology firms and Fortune 500 companies. It develops and presents new models towards the development of an innovation cross-border region, and recommends new policy approaches. Ultimately, it explores whether or not the Canada-US border is an impediment to the development of cross-border high-tech clusters.
Kathrine E. Richardson is an associate professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at San José State University. Her research specializes in the mobility and retention of the internationally highly skilled, and how these professionals influence the growth and change of urban systems. She graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2006 with a Ph.D. in geography, and did a post-doc at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. In addition to teaching, Dr. Richardson is currently working on her second book.
Maps, Indigenous Territory, and the Problem of Anachronism
February 11, 2020 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Richard A. Rhodes
Join Canadian Studies for the 2020 Thomas Garden Barnes Lecture. Professor Richard A. Rhodes will speak on "Maps, Indigenous Territory, and the Problem of Anachronism".
One of the more problematic tasks in studying the geography of language is charting shifts in the location of minority languages. Societies speaking threatened languages are often also under territorial pressures. Maps by experts have implications well beyond their best take on history, and the indigenous peoples of North America provide some of the most cogent examples. Professor Rhodes will address several examples of First Nations/Native American people that highlight some of these problems.
Mental Health and Refugees: the Eritrean Case
February 7, 2020 | 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Yohannes Ferdinando Drar
Mental health problems and suicide are two challenges facing the Eritrean community. The collective multi-generational trauma Eritreans experience is a direct result of continuous wars and human right violations committed by the current government. The denial of basic rights in Eritrea and subsequent difficulties experienced during migration, while claiming asylum, and integrating into new cultures in destination countries continue to affect migrants. As a result, many Eritrean refugees suffer from poor mental health. In 2018, an Eritrean ICE detainee killed himself in transit while being deported at the Egyptian airport. The same year in Europe, many Eritrean teenagers who travelled by themselves also took their lives. The suicide rate continues to rise among Eritrean refugees in Canada and the U.S.
Talking about mental health is considered a taboo in the Eritrean culture and among Eritrean refugees in the Bay Area. Mr. Drar will address the growing mental health problems in order to raise awareness and encourage faculty and students to play a leading role in resolving this crisis.
Yohannes Ferdinando Drar came to Canada in the '80s as refugee from Eritrea. After arriving in Canada, he attained his bachelor's and master's degrees in social work from Carleton University in Ottawa. He has since been working as a Mental Health Social Worker at Royal Ottawa Hospital. He is a strong advocate for refugees mental health issues. He raises awareness and educates refugee communities and the public through seminars, radio talk shows, as well as writing articles in community newspapers. He is a strong community activist and organizer. His passion remains to integrate new immigrants and refugees into their host country.
On February 8th, Mr. Drar will participate in a full day healing and educational event with the Eritrean community in the Bay Area. Eritrean refugees started to arrive in the Bay Area in the early 1980s. Today the Bay Area is home to one of the largest Eritrean diaspora communities.