This lecture examines how the concept of vulnerability is “translated” from legal bureaucratic discourses into actual policy and practice in the refugee resettlement context. In particular, we trace how the integration potential of refugees continues to be weighed against their vulnerabilities in the process. While resettlement is a voluntary commitment and not legally binding, states that have signed the 1951 Geneva Convention have agreed to share the responsibility of providing protection and solutions for refugees who cannot return to their country of origin. Through a comparative discussion of refugee resettlement in Canada and Norway, we shed light on some mechanisms through which the humanitarian focus on prioritizing the most vulnerable comes under pressure from competing political considerations and rationales. By examining instances of what we call the political or ‘tactical’ uses of resettlement, we aim not only to highlight its partisan and domestic political dynamics but also to open up questions of who is ultimately left behind and considered ‘too vulnerable’ for resettlement.

Dagmar Soennecken is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy & Administration at York University (Toronto, Canada). She is also cross-appointed to the Law & Society Program there. Her research focuses on comparative public policy in the EU and North America. She is particularly interested in questions concerning law and the courts as well as citizenship and migration, including refugees. In 2019, she became the Editor-in-Chief of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. Her work has been published in Comparative Migration Studies, Law & Policy, Droit et Société, Politics and Governance among others. She was one of the three Canadian co-investigators on the recently concluded VULNER project team.

Hosted by the Institute for European Studies and cosponsored by the Migrations Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and funded by the Mellon Foundation's Just Futures Initiative.

Exhibition Description
hydro-POWER: State and Energy in Central Asia interrogates water infrastructure and strategic resource development as an instrument of imperial and colonial expansion. The industrial objects at the focus of this analysis controlled not only the distribution of water but also of regional power. The construction of irrigation infrastructure and hydroelectric dams was instrumental in the internal colonialism of the USSR. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, its formerly federated states gained independence. During this process of decolonization, the centralized system of resource management and distribution ceased to exist, which led to the intensification of tensions between the new neighboring nation-states.

Today, the image of hydroelectric dams—both existing and speculative—is mobilized to exert symbolic regional power through the production of scarcities. Studying the Kyrgyz and Uzbek hydro-industrial landscape, this project traces colonial and de-colonial arrangements of power through these objects. Drawing on the feminist scholarship of Michelle Murphy and Nancy Hiemstra, the exhibitors employ a methodology of studying the technopolitical qualities of infrastructures that remain obscured from the public by mapping access and in-access. This project aims to demonstrate that when infrastructures produced by a politics of domination remain untouched in the process of decolonization, the objects are predestined to reproduce the same hierarchies of (social) relation.

Alp Demiroglu and Veronika Varga (both B.Arch. '21) received the Robert James Eidlitz Travel Fellowship in 2022-23. The aim of their research trip was to produce a counter-archival method for studying infrastructural objects and how they are situated within the broader physical and political landscapes. Through this exhibition, Demiroglu and Varga animate the materials of their research by bringing them into dialogue with one another. The visual materials include digital photographs, medium-format and small-format film photographs, as well as moving images. The visual materials are complemented by rich field notes written by both researchers, expanding on the sites by including what they did not have visual access to.

Biographies
Alp Demiroglu (B.Arch. '21) is a designer at Robert A. M. Stern Architects in New York City. He completed his architecture degree at Cornell with minors in History of Architecture, European Studies, and Migration Studies. Demiroglu recently researched hydro-infrastructural impacts on society and landscapes throughout Central Asia. He won the 2021 RAMSA Prize, exploring ideas of architectural translation and migration in Miami's early modernisms. He was recognized as a Cornell Tradition Fellow and has exhibited in the Turkish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale. His paper, "Reparative Borderscapes: Dreams After Nightmares," was published in the Dutch arts and culture magazine Simulacrum, Vol.32 No.1.

Veronika Varga (B.Arch. '21) is a trained architectural designer and a researcher of contemporary spatial conflicts. She completed her architecture degree at Cornell, after which she spent some time practicing as a designer in Budapest, Hungary. She continued her studies at the postgraduate program of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University so that she could pursue a career as a researcher. She recently completed fieldwork regarding how political power is enacted through water infrastructure in Central Asia. Besides working as a freelance designer, she is a volunteer geolocation specialist at Airwars, and she is also developing a binaural soundwalk about the history of land reclamation in Canary Wharf with her collective, PALs Research Group. Varga's practice is situated at the intersection of (environmental) justice, post-industrial rivers, and radical imagination. She is currently developing a feminist research methodology through leakage to produce a map of changing legal thresholds as a result of transgressions in the nuclear industry. She presented the most recent iteration of this work at Leakage: Inaugural Conference of STSing at TU Dresden. Through collaborations that emerged from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University, she remains dedicated to furthering this work.

The 2024 MexicanEast conference, held at Cornell University from September 20-21, 2024, brings scholars together to discuss transit through the lens of Mexican cultural studies. We welcome discussion about migration, movement, transition, trade, and trans and queer issues, as well as any other meaningful engagement with the topic of transit.

Event Overview

Immigration will be a key issue in 2025. Everyone agrees that we have a broken immigration system, but people disagree on the solutions. Congress is paralyzed. Presidents try executive actions but are sued. Federal courts seem to be the final arbiters of immigration policy these days.

In the meantime, employers face labor shortages. The demographics of an aging population and declining birth rates are indisputable. More people worldwide are fleeing the breakdown of civil society, climate change, and even persecution than ever before. Over 10 million people lack immigration status in the United States. More than half of them have been residing and working in our communities for over 15 years. And our immigration courts face a backlog of over 3 million deportation cases.

Join Cornell Law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr and a panel of experts from the Cornell Law School immigration law and policy research program to learn what immigration laws and policies might change, both in the lame duck session after the election and in 2025.

What You'll Learn

How the current cohort of immigrants differs from those of the pastWhat might be in store for DACA and other immigration issuesThree targeted immigration reforms that most Americans can agree on: border management and asylum policy, worker programs, and DREAMer protectionsWhat you can do to influence immigration policySpeakers

view detailsof Amy Nice

Amy Nice
​​Distinguished Visiting Immigration Scholar
Cornell Law School

view detailsof Charles Kamasaki

Charles Kamasaki
Distinguished Visiting Immigration Scholar
Cornell Law School

view detailsof Marielena Hincapié

Marielena Hincapié
Distinguished Visiting Immigration Scholar
Cornell Law School

view detailsof Randel Johnson

Randel Johnson
​​Distinguished Visiting Immigration Scholar
Cornell Law School

view detailsof Stephen W. Yale-Loehr

Stephen W. Yale-Loehr
Professor
Cornell Law School

view detailsof Theresa Cardinal Brown

Theresa Cardinal Brown
​​Distinguished Visiting Immigration Scholar
Cornell Law School

Register Now

Go global in summer 2025! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

This session will discuss opportunities with the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, a Cornell Global Hubs partner in Ecuador.

Register for this virtual session.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Bartels World Affairs Lecture

The bestselling author of Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World joins us for a personal journey down the conspiracy rabbit hole to explore why our political sphere has become dangerously warped.

When author and social activist Naomi Klein discovered a writer with the same first name but radically different political views was chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously—until suddenly it wasn’t. As the pandemic took hold, she absorbed a barrage of insults from her doppelganger’s followers.

Klein’s 2023 book Doppelganger follows Other Naomi into a digital underworld of conspiracies, anti-vaxxers, and right-wing paranoia. Klein’s journey reveals mirrored concerns and unlikely connections between well-meaning liberals and the right-wing voices that relish “owning” them.

After a talk sharing her insights, Klein joins distinguished global democracy experts from Cornell to lift the lid on this surreal election moment and examine how our politics have become so twisted and polarized. What can we do to escape our collective vertigo and get back to fighting for what really matters?

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Panelists

Read election remarks from the panelists in Chronicle coverage of global democracy activities on campus.

Thomas Garrett, Einaudi Center Lund Practitioner in Residence, Distinguished Global Democracy Lecturer (Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy)Suzanne Mettler, John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, Department of Government (College of Arts and Sciences)Kenneth Roberts (moderator), Einaudi Center Democratic Threats and Resilience faculty fellow, Richard J. Schwartz Professor, Department of Government (A&S)

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This event is sold out.

All free tickets are reserved. If you don’t have a ticket but would like to attend, please arrive 15 minutes early to be put on our wait list.

A reception with refreshments will follow the lecture and panel.

Lecture and Panel: 5:00 | G10 Biotechology BuildingReception: 6:30-7:30 | Biotechnology Building Atrium

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About Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and international bestselling author of nine books published in over 35 languages, including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and her most recent book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023). A columnist for The Guardian, her writing has appeared in leading media around the world. She is a tenured professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia, founding codirector of UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice, and honorary professor of media and climate at Rutgers University.

About the Bartels World Affairs Lecture

The Bartels World Affairs Lecture is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. This flagship event brings distinguished international figures to campus each academic year to speak on global topics and meet with Cornell faculty and students, particularly undergraduates. The lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels ’48 and Nancy Horton Bartels ’48.