Non-citizenship: 2016–17 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar
Setting up inside a newly constructed geodesic dome. Refugee Camp, Calais, France, September, 2015. Photo by Lewis Watts © Lewis Watts, 2015
The CLRC (now Huerta Center) was honored to be part of Non-citizenship, UC Santa Cruz's 2016-17 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Culture. Linking citizenship, migration, border, labor, and carceral studies, and juxtaposing spatial and social mobility and immobility, this year-long series of events explored what it means to be a citizen and non-citizen in a world made by migrants, refugees, guest workers, permanent residents, asylum seekers, slaves, prisoners, detainees, the stateless, and denizens (residents who do not hold the same rights as citizens). Our seminar shed light on the tiered membership—what we call the spectrum of belonging—structuring societies in various places and periods and sharpens our understanding of the ways in which the mobility and regulation of non-citizens affect and transform notions of participation, belonging, and the social contract.
Non-citizenship was organized around three themes: "Forced Migration" (fall 2016), "Labor Mobility and Precarity" (winter 2017), and "Fluidity of Status: Migrants, Citizens, Denizens" (spring 2017). It was preceded by Borders and Belonging: A Series of Events on Human Migration in the spring of 2016. To learn more about events related to our Sawyer Seminar, please visit our Events page.
Our Sawyer Seminar brought together an eclectic community of scholars working on and in various regions of the world and supports the work of Dr. Emily Mitchell-Eaton, our Postdoctoral Scholar, and Claudia Lopez and Tsering Wangmo, PhD candidates in Sociology and Literature respectively at UC Santa Cruz. To learn more about the superb scholars associated with Non-citizenship, please visit our Participants page.
Non-citizenship was a collaborative effort of the CLRC, Institute for Humanities Research, Division of Social Sciences, Division of Graduate Studies, Office of Research, and Latin American and Latino Studies Department.
Click here to read our project summary and rationale for Non-citizenship.
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