Race, Migration and Policing

When: Thursday, November 5, 2020, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Online, joining instructions will be sent to registered participants.

Part of the Sanctuary: What next? International Seminar Series with and for undocumented residents in cities series.

Please note: start time and end time stated is in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

About the event

1. Police racism and violence against Black, Indigenous and People of Colour are currently part of mainstream conversations. Harsh anti-immigration policies and practices have also had impacts on mainstream discourses.
   
   What is important for us to know about how these two conversations are connected? How can connecting these two issues help support meaningful and/or radical change in the policing of migrants?
   
   
2. Local police frequently collaborate with immigration authorities, and share information with local public institutions like schools, shelters, and mental and physical health authorities.
   
   How do these partnerships affect access to criminal justice and other public institutions by migrants without status or with precarious status? How is access further reduced due to race, sex, gender, and other markers of social difference?
   
   
3. 3) There are currently strong movements to abolish police, as well as to abolish immigration enforcement bodies, like ICE and the CBSA. There are also calls for local police to pass and effectively implement “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policies.
   
   What policies or demands should we be making to reduce the local policing of migrants?

Panel

Chair: Kikélola Roach, Civil Rights Lawyer, Ryerson University, Canada

Speakers:
Prasanna Balasundaram , Downtown Legal Services, University of Toronto, Canada

Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race Relations, UK

Bill Ong Hing, Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic, University of San Francisco, USA

Andrea J. Ritchie, Police Misconduct Attorney, Barnard Center for Research on Women, USA

Part of the Sanctuary: What next? International Seminar Series with and for undocumented residents in cities series

Sanctuary: What next? will take stock and reinvigorate urban strategies of resistance to anti-migrant policies. Speakers include leading activists, advocates, NGOs, frontline workers and municipal officials across pioneering sanctuary cities in the USA, Canada, and UK.

The seminars will ask: what strategies of resistance and solidarities have developed in cities? How can we build stronger coalitions within and between cities? How are new forms of governance posing new challenges to non-citizens and solidarity with them – from the criminalization to the enclosure of public space and widespread surveillance? And what does – or could – the future look like for cities in this rapidly shifting moment?

 

Organising committee

Tihe series is convened by Dr Rachel Humphris (Queen Mary University of London), Graham Hudson (Ryerson University) and Kathy Coll (University of San Francisco). It is part of the project 'Welcoming Cities? Understanding Sanctuary in Securitized States' funded by The Leverhulme Trust, UK.