Exploiting Difference: Immigrant Experience and Citizenship

Over the last half century, political and intellectual discourse has made us aware of the complex and multidimensional relationships between social “difference” and “inequality.” In this global age, the intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality, age, ability, and nationality provide rich contexts for exploring the production and management of “difference” in everyday lives of communities; emerging multiple and intersecting identities; the dynamics of power and marked “bodies;” and social processes of exclusions and production of hierarchies.

In this first part of a three-part conference held annually by William Paterson University's College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Drs. Alyshia Gálvez and Michael Innis-Jiménez address the incongruities and injustices faced by today's U.S. immigrants as they attempt to assimilate into contemporary American society.

Dr. Alyshia Gálvez is an Associate Professor and Director of the Jaime Lucero Mexican Studies Institute at Lehman College/City University of New York. Dr. Michael Innis-Jiménez is an Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama.