Moral Obligations in a World Afraid of Refugees: Philosophy of Immigration Series Part I
Serena Parekh, Distinguished Professor and Chairperson of Philosophy, Northeastern University
Monday February 26, 2024
6:00 PM (online via Zoom)

Zoom pre-registration link: https://brooklyn-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtfu-tpjMsHtSC79ygo4P88Y4ihz5w7G9o

Professor Serena Parekh will be in conversation with Professor Matthew Lindauer (Philosophy, Brooklyn College) on the ethics of immigration, especially as it pertains to refugees. The discussion, grounded in philosophy, is aimed to engage students and the general public.

Serena Parekh is the author of three books, including her most recent one, No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis (Oxford 2020), which won the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award, the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, and was a finalist for the PROSE award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers. Professor Parekh has been interviewed as an expert on refugees in a wide variety of media including the New York Times, BBC World Service, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, Newsweek, ABC News, Bloomberg, Slate, and CTV News in Canada, among others.

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When We Decide: Plural Agency, Voluntariness, and Migrant Choice: Philosophy of Immigration Series Part II
Ariana Peruzzi, Ph.D. Student, Department of Philosophy, University of of Michigan
Wednesday March 13, 2024
6:00 PM (online via Zoom)

Zoom pre-registration link: https://brooklyn-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qf-uupjMvGdYGyfaxP9fZJUtx_n97fCxY

Arianna Peruzzi will speak on voluntariness in migration. The decision to migrate is often made by households, not individuals. (She uses her cousin's migration journey from Tinaco to Chicago as an example.) In these cases, the act of migration is often best understood as an exercise of plural agency. She offers criteria for voluntariness in migration that are apt to cases of plural agency. A conversation with Prof. Matthew Lindauer (Philosophy, Brooklyn College) and the audience will follow.

Ariana Peruzzi’s research is in political philosophy. She is currently writing a dissertation on migration justice, territorial rights, and rights of non-displacement. Some of the questions she is investigating include: (1) When is migration involuntary? (2) Who ought to be eligible for refugeehood/asylee status? And, (3) do communities have rights against displacement? Ariana is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Latin American studies at the University of Michigan and is interested in issues of movement and displacement from a Latin American lens. She did her BA at the University of Houston, completing majors in philosophy and liberal studies, and minors in English, music history, and politics.

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The Diminished Citizenship of U.S.-Citizen Children of Undocumented Migrants: Philosophy of Immigration Series Part III
Lori Gallegos, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Texas State University
Wednesday April 10, 2024
6:00 PM (online via Zoom)

Zoom pre-registration link:https://brooklyn-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvduuprjIuGt2kuYzX2dN8F0VRNy3_vpQv

Birthright citizenship is a policy that entitles anyone born in the United States to automatic U.S. citizenship, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. In the debate about the merits and drawbacks of birthright citizenship, wide-ranging claims about the impacts of the policy have been made, but one assumption that both critics and defenders shareis that the U.S.-born children of undocumented migrants benefit significantly from U.S. citizenship. Professor Gallegos presents a caveat to this conclusion by showing that although the beneficiaries of birthright citizenship are formally included in political membership and have all the rights and protections that are afforded to them in accordance with the law, they don’t, in practice, obtain the full bundle of goods that accompanies citizenship for those who are born to U.S.-citizen parents. Gallegos argues that in virtue of their relations to their undocumented caregivers––relations which cannot be readily abandoned––the children of undocumented migrants experience a form of diminished citizenship. A conversation with Prof. Matthew Lindauer (Philosophy, Brooklyn College) and the audience will follow.

Lori Gallegos is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University. She teaches and researches in the areas of philosophy of emotions, moral psychology, and Latin American philosophy. Her work frequently explores the interchange between subjective experiences of emotion, and broader social and political dynamics. She is the editor of APA Studies on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy. She has published academic articles, as well as book chapters that appear in Latin American and Latinx Philosophy: A Collaborative Introduction, ed. Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr. (Routledge, 2020), Latin American Immigration Ethics, ed. Amy Reed-Sandoval and Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda (University of Arizona Press, 2021), Philosophy and Human Flourishing, ed. John J. Stuhr (Oxford University Press, 2022), the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism, ed. Kevin Aho, Megan Altman, and Hans Pedersen, (Routledge, 2024). She is also co-editing, alongside Manuel Vargas and Francisco Gallegos, the first anthology on Latinx philosophy for classroom use, The Latinx Philosophy Reader (under contract with Routledge). Born and raised in Albuquerque, NM, Gallegos earned a B.A. in philosophy and foreign languages at the University of New Mexico in 2008. Afterward, she worked as a full-time case manager at an immigration law firm, where she focused on family-based immigration. In 2016, she earned a Ph.D. in philosophy and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from Stony Brook University (SUNY).