Today, we focus on migration. In fall of 2020, CLACS and UW-Madison’s Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program had a Migration Webinar Series, with one conversation entitled Crossing Borders, Navigating Race: Blackness and Migration in the Americas. That conversation, moderated by Ermitte Saint Jacques (Department of African and African Diaspora Studies) is available on YouTube and discusses Haitian migrants to the U.S., Afro-Cubans in South Florida, and Senegalese migrants in Argentina.

Nadja Drost, a Pulitzer grantee, has a piece entitled “What Migrants Face as They Journey Through the Deadly Darién Gap” which focuses on migrants from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Haiti in their treacherous journey between Colombia and Panama. This piece was presented by Drost in our 2020 Summer Teacher Institute, which focused on “Under-Reported Stories from Latin America.“

The Constitutional Rights Foundation has a section of their “Educating About Immigration” project called “Refugees from the Caribbean: Cuban and Haiti “Boat People“‘ which includes background on the situations in which Cuban and Haitian migration may occur, and an activity to ask your students to consider what US policy should be towards Cuban and Haitian refugees.

For more information on an organization that are working to support refugees, deportees, and other migrants on the US-Mexico border and beyond, visit Al Otro Lado’s website.