When
Virtual Charlas con Café
Zoom link: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/916909208
In this talk, Pugh argues that an 'invisibility bargain' constrains migrants' identities and political participation, demanding their economic contributions plus political and social invisibility in exchange for tolerance of their presence in the host country. In response, migrants negotiate their visible identity differences, and gain access to protections, rights, and resources through networks of non-state brokers to avoid citizen backlash against overt political activism. Based on more than 650 surveys of Colombian forced migrants and 170 interviews and network analysis of migrant-serving organizations in six provinces of Ecuador from 15 months of fieldwork over the course of eight years, Pugh challenges state-centric governance approaches, underscoring migrant agency in negotiating identity to influence social hierarchies, coexistence, and human security. These findings, based on Pugh's forthcoming book, advance the broader understanding of migration in the Global South.
About the speaker:
Jeff Pugh is an assistant professor of conflict resolution at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the executive director of the Center for Mediation, Peace, and Resolution of Conflict (CEMPROC), an NGO in Ecuador that he has directed for the past 17 years. He received his PhD in political science from the Johns Hopkins University. Pugh’s research focuses on peacebuilding and non-state actors in the Global South. His book, The Invisibility Bargain: Governance Networks and Migrant Human Security in Ecuador (under contract at Oxford University Press), examines the integration, political participation, and access to human security of Colombian migrants in Ecuador. His research has received ten best paper awards, and he was a 2014-15 Fulbright Scholar affiliated with FLACSO Ecuador. He teaches courses on Negotiation, Immigration & Conflict, Peace & Justice, International Relations, Latin American Politics, and others. He has given invited talks at the United Nations Interagency Framework Team on Preventive Action, Harvard, the Colombian Truth Commission, Brown, Johns Hopkins, and many others. He frequently provides expert witness affidavits for asylum cases of Ecuadorians in the United States. Pugh formerly served on the selection committee for the Delta Prize for Peace and Global Understanding, whose recipients included President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Mikhail Gorbachev, and others, and he is a past president of the Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies (MACLAS).