MacKay Lecture Series tackles immigration

The politics of immigration have heated up in recent years, becoming the focus of pointed political debates considering the Syrian and African refugee crises, the Brexit referendum and national elections in both Canada and the United States.

These hot topics inspired Dal’s Pauline Gardiner Barber (Sociology and Social Anthropology) and Ruben Zaiotti (Political Science and the European Union Centre of Excellence) to propose “Immigration Politics in Review” as the common interdisciplinary theme for this year’s MacKay Lecture Series.

“Immigration Politics in Review is a timely relevant series which we hope will engage people in a comparative discussion about global migration and its consequences for migrants generally, and for immigrants and refugees who arrive in Canada to settle in our communities,” says Dr. Gardiner Barber.

The first lecture of the series will take place on Thursday, November 17 at 7 p.m. in room 127 of the Goldberg Computer Science Building. It features Minelle Mahtani, associate professor of Human Geography and the Program in Journalism at the University of Toronto – Scarborough. Her presentation, "Living Race in the Post-Racial Era? Mixed Race Amnesia in Canada," will focus on how multiraciality is experienced in the global north. Dr. Mahtani’s research explores some of the assumptions and attitudes people have around multiraciality.

The remaining lectures of this series will take place in the new year (in January and February) and will feature Audrey MacKlin of the University of Toronto on "Resettling Canada's Refugees: Cosmopolitanism, Citizenship and Privatisation" and Thomas Faist of Bielefeld University, Germany, on "The Futures of Migration in Europe and Germany: A New Normalcy?" The annual MacKay History lecture topic will be announced at a later date.

For further details on this year’s MacKay Lecture series, visit its website.