Public Policy
Immigrant Oregon panel discussion
| October 28, 2021 | ||
| 7:00 pm |
175 Knight Law Center
Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics
This panel features authors of a new report, “A State of Immigrants: A New Look at the Immigrant Experience in Oregon.” The report documents the actions of immigrants and the adoption of public policies and community level strategies in Oregon that are helping immigrants and refugees achieve social, civic, cultural, and economic integration.
The report, made available here, was coordinated and edited by Bob Bussel, director of the UO Labor Education and Research Center, and includes contributions by an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Portland State University. The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Wayne Morse Center’s Public Affairs Speaker Series and is cosponsored by the UO Labor Education Research Center and made possible by the Philip H. Knight Chair Fund.
Livestreaming will be available for this event. Please register to be notified of any event changes. This event is subject to UO COVID guidelines; refer to the UO COVID-19 Resource page for more details.
Panelists
Daniel López-Cevallos is an associate professor of Latina/o/x studies, ethnic studies, and health equity and the assistant vice provost for undergraduate education at OSU. His research focuses on the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, class, and other socioeconomic and sociocultural constructs, and their relationship to health and health care issues. He is invested in the development and implementation of community, institutional, and policy-level strategies to better serve Latinx and other marginalized communities.
Lola Loustaunau is a UO sociology graduate student and Wayne Morse Graduate Research Fellow. Her research interests are in the sociology of labor, migration, emotions, and gender, especially looking into the working conditions and collective organizing of precarious workers with an intersectional frame. Her dissertation which focuses on immigrant and refugee women employed in food processing in the Pacific Northwest and their experiences as essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maggie Mitteis is a third year doctoral student in the Critical and Sociocultural Studies in Education Program at UO. She’s also a part-time faculty member in Lane Community College’s English as a Second Language Department. Her research focuses on English language learners and their identities both in and outside the classroom environment.
Lynn Stephen is Philip H. Knight Chair, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences, and professor of anthropology at UO. Stephen’s scholarly work centers on the impact of globalization, migration, nationalism and the politics of culture on indigenous communities in the Americas. Through her concept of transborder communities and migrations, Stephen has produced ground-breaking analysis on gender, economic development, gendered violence, asylum and migration, globalization and social movements, indigenous autonomy, and the history of Latinx communities spread across multiple borders.
Moderator
Since 2002, Bob Bussel has been director of the Labor Education and Research Center at UO, where he is also a history professor. As a labor educator, Bob has conducted trainings and workshops in the areas of strategic planning, leadership development, organizational change, political and community engagement, and labor history. Bussel has long been interested in issues affecting immigrant workers. He edited a 2008 University of Oregon report on the immigrant experience in Oregon and later helped organize the Integration Network for Immigrants in Lane County, a group that seeks to create more welcoming communities for immigrants and their families.
Oregon Water Futures
UO Professor Alaí Reyes-Santos Collaborates with OEC to Elevate Water Justice
“A changing climate, aging infrastructure across the state, and lack of ongoing investment in clean water have left Oregon’s water systems stressed, putting our health, safety, economy and environment at risk. Communities of color, particularly those that are rural and low- income, are often on the front lines of these impacts, facing a wide range of threats, including rising utility rates, disparities in drought and flooding vulnerability, and exposure to nitrates, pesticides, and heavy metals. In some rural counties, Native peoples and communities of color represent 30–40 percent of the population, yet face significant barriers to participating in state policy and infrastructure discussions. In metropolitan areas such as Eugene, Salem, and Portland, low-income communities and communities of color find themselves at high risk for water insecurity and climate-related disasters as documented during wildfires and seasonal flooding events.” — Project Overview / Oregon Water Futures Project Report
September 27, 2021—In fall 2020 Alaí Reyes-Santos, a UO associate professor of indigenous, race and ethnic studies, along with others working collaboratively in the Oregon Water Futures Project, interviewed more than 100 people in Native, Black, Latinx, and migrant communities throughout Oregon, holding conversations with them about water challenges and culturally specific resiliency. They collected a range of stories that underscored the threats and impacts to Oregonians, particularly Native peoples and communities of color, of an aging water infrastructure, climate change, and lack of public investment in clean water. They found that many of the people they interviewed did not trust their drinking water, and that they often faced significant barriers in participating in policy discussions.
A synopsis of their findings, along with the full report, can be found at: https://oeconline.org/new-report-elevates-water-justice-in-oregon/. The project website holds relevant op-eds, interviews, and report summaries in four languages.
In a letter sent mid-September 2021, Prof. Reyes-Santos offers a gracious thank you to CLLAS and other UO units that supported her research on Oregon Water Futures. Starting out in 2019 as a collaborative effort with the Oregon Environmental Council (OEC), this project has since attracted “a historic 340 million dollar investment on water in the 2021 legislative session; with 1.5 million dedicated to engaging communities of color and other historically underserved communities in conversations about water in the state,” Reyes-Santos wrote.
CLLAS was among the first to provide seed funding for Prof. Reyes-Santos’s Oregon Water Futures Project, awarding her, along with the OEC, a CLLAS Faculty Collaboration Research Grant in 2019. Other UO funders include the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, the Center for Environmental Futures, and the Vice-Provost Office for Research and Innovation. The collaborative later received funding from Meyer Memorial Trust, the Collins Foundation, and the Lazar Foundation. The Meyer grant was renewed and now includes a collaboration with UO’s School of Law’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center.
Shadow Suburbanism: Mexican Settlement and Immigration Enforcement in the Nuevo South
CLLAS Faculty Event
VIDEO
View the video for this CLLAS Research Series Faculty presentation by John Arroyo (School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management), here.
Over the past 20 years, Mexican communities have bypassed historic, urban ethnic enclaves to settle in and physically transform suburban areas of U.S. South. Nowhere is this spatial “Latinization” phenomenon more acute than in small towns such as those in Gwinnett County (metropolitan Atlanta), one of the foremost frontiers of new immigrant destinations in America. Coinciding with the growth of predominantly undocumented Mexican immigrants in these regions have been popular state and county-level immigration policies —all of which have use explicit language to position states like Georgia to be a national pioneer of hyper immigration surveillance and a regional enforcement model for neighboring metropolitan areas. The culmination of these adverse effects has required Mexican residents to create covert, built environments. Findings from this research analyze the key reactionary anti-immigrant federalism policies that influence how Mexican immigrants reshape culturally-specific land use in suburban Atlanta.
John Arroyo, PhD, AICP is an Assistant Professor in Engaging Diverse Communities and director of the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice at the University of Oregon. Previously, he was an The Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Latino Studies at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM. As a scholar and practitioner of urban planning and migration studies, Arroyo’s applied research and teaching agendas focus on inclusive urbanism. He is particularly interested in the social, political, and cultural dimensions of immigrant-centered built environments and neighborhood change in underrepresented communities. He received a doctorate in Urban Planning, Policy, and Design as well as a Master’s in City Planning and a Certificate in Urban Design from MIT. He is a governor-appointed member of the Oregon State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation and serves on the boards of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities and the Public Humanities Network.
Oregon Senate Confirms Gerardo Francisco Sandoval as Land Conservation and Development Commissioner
Editor’s Note: Gerardo Sandoval served previously as a co-director of CLLAS.
December 6, 2019—From Around the O
On December 2, the Oregon Senate confirmed Professor Gerardo Sandoval as a commissioner on the Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC). During his term, which began December 1, 2019, and ends November 30, 2023, Sandoval will represent the Willamette Valley region.
“This is tremendous for [the State of] Oregon,” said Director Jim Rue in the committee’s press release. “Dr. Sandoval’s research, experience, and perspective will help ensure our work benefits all Oregonians.”
The commission, assisting the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD), adopts state land-use goals and implements rules, assures local plan compliance with the 19 statewide planning goals, coordinates state and local planning, and manages the coastal zone program. The commission is also tasked with implementing rules on issues as wide-ranging as wildfire planning and urban growth boundaries to re-zoning for “missing middle” housing and the push to allow breweries on hops farms.
Sandoval is an associate professor in the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management (PPPM) at the University of Oregon. His work and research focus on the intersection of planning, immigration, and community change.
In addition to now serving as a LCDC commissioner, Sandoval is currently serving a four-year appointment as a councilmember on the State’s Housing Stability Council (HSC). The HSC leads the work of the OregonHousing and Community Services (OHCS) department to meet the housing and services needs of low- and moderate-income Oregonians. The Housing Stability Council works to establish and support OHCS’ strategic direction, foster constructive partnerships across the state, set policy and issue funding decisions, and overall lend their unique expertise to the policy and program development of the agency.
“It is an honor to serve the state of Oregon in this capacity,” said Sandoval. “Public service is at the core of the UO’s ethos.”
Sandoval’s expertise has been recognized through numerous awards and honors, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award from the UO for promoting diversity, social justice, and equity. Sandoval is also the College of Design’s Dean’s Fellow for Diversity and leads the college’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee and its implementation of its Diversity Action Plan.
“Affecting positive change in the State of Oregon is embedded in the UO and PPPM missions, so it’s not at all surprising that Gerardo would lend his expertise to this effort,” said Rich Margerum, director of the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management.
Learn more about the commission and its work on the LCD Commission’s website.
Political Discussion Networks, Political Engagement, and the Latino Electorate
| January 23, 2020 | ||
| 4:00 pm |
Knight Library, Browsing Room
Marisa Abrajano is professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests are in American politics, particularly in developing ways to increase politics participation and civic engagement amongst racial/ethnic minorities. Her most recent book is White Backlash: Immigration, Race and American Politics (with Zoltan Hajnal, 2015).
Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. Cosponsored by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies.
. . 
. . 