This symposium examines the contemporary stakes of migration, policy, and organizing through engagement with two recent books on the material and affective violences embedded in contemporary U.S. immigrant law and enforcement: Amelia Frank-Vitale’s Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds (UC Press, 2026), and Susan Coutin, Jennifer Chacón, and Stephen Lee’s Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting Failures of Immigration Law (Stanford, 2024). Bringing together the books’ authors, UCR faculty, attorneys, and local IE activists, the symposium also considers the role of activist-engaged research in struggles for immigrant justice and reflects on possibilities for local involvement in the Inland Empire.

Featured Speakers

Amelia Frank-Vitale (Princeton Anthropology), Susan Coutin (UC Irvine Crimonology Law & Society), Stephen Lee (UC Irvine Laz), Jennifer Chacón (Stanford Law), Eva Bitrán (ACLU SoCal), Organizers from Gente Organizada

Panels moderated by Prof. Elizabeth Hanna Rubio (UCR Gender and Sexuality Studies) and Prof. Cecilia Vasquez (UCR, Anthropology

Co-hosted by Gender and Sexuality Studies and Anthropology

Co-sponsors: Society, Environment, and Health Equity (SEHE), Black Study, Media, Culture, and Society, Ethnic Studies, Political Science, Center for Ideas and Society, Decolonizing Humanism (?) Initiative

This event is free and open to the public