Labor Studies Working Group Tenth Decade Project Graduate Research Symposium

Featuring presentations by last year's grant recipients and a keynote address by Angela Stuesse entitled “Scratching Out a Living: Activist Research for Immigrant Worker Justice.”

Agenda:   
1-1:05pm INTRODUCTION  
1:05-1:55pm PANEL 1  
“‘Happy soldier, happy family’: Exploring Militarized Relations of Production Among Military Spouses” by William Oliver, PhD candidate in Sociology 
“Producing Americans: Industrial Education at The Ford Motors English School” by Vincent Portillo, PhD candidate in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric 
Faculty Respondent: John Burdick, Professor and Chair of Anthropology 
2-2:50p PANEL 2  
“The Politics of Distress: Drought and Migration in Maharashtra” by Natasha Koshy, PhD candidate in Social Science 
“Milking Cows, Draining Workers: Labor, Resistance and Cultural Moral Economy in New York’s Dairy Industry” by Fabiola Ortiz Valdez, PhD candidate in Anthropology 
Faculty Respondent: Cecilia Green, Associate Professor of Sociology 
2:55-3:45 PANEL 3  
“From citizen to surplus, Madonna to Marx: Towards a retheorization of homelessness” by Brian Hennigan, PhD candidate in Geography 
“Dollar Store Economy: Employee Criminalization and the Liability Model of Work” by Tracy Vargas, PhD candidate in Sociology 
Faculty Respondent: Matt Huber, Associate Professor of Geography 
3:45-4: BREAK  
4-5 KEYNOTE TALK  
"Scratching Out a Living: Activist Research for Immigrant Worker Justice” by Angela Stuesse, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill

If you require accommodations, please contact Deborah Toole by email at datoole@syr.edu or by phone at 315.443.2367.

The Work, Labor, and Citizenship Initiative nurtures interdisciplinary study of the many fundamental trends now at play in the broad field of labor studies. Over the past four decades, the world has experienced a precipitous increase in income inequality, fueled in part by the global restructuring of labor markets and the collapse of organized labor. At the same time, rights and entitlements traditionally associated with employment have been undermined by a shifting worker/employer power balance, with effects on job security, benefits, pensions, and wages. Across the globe, labor markets are characterized by mass unemployment, disruptive migration, and a burgeoning informal sector. These trends have direct implications for political participation and workers’ sense of of their own citizenship. This workshop will explore the shifting terrain of work and labor and its implications for citizenship.