The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides full funding for graduate and professional students conducting research in any field or teaching in more than 150 countries. Open to U.S. citizens only. The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program supports doctoral students conducting research in modern languages or area studies for six to 12 months.

Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents of the United States. Travel to Western European countries is not eligible.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Migration, Imprisonment and "Race": Toward a Comparative Study between the US and Europe

By Dario Melossi

(University of Bologna)

The number of migrants in prison is very high in most European penal systems today whereas it is quite low in the United States, and it has been that way for a long time. Criminological and historical reconstructions in the United States have advanced the thesis that the initial hostility toward migrants, expressed also in processes of criminalization, slowly turned into a process of assimilation and “whitening” of Southern and Eastern European migrants (however, things did not change that much when, more recently, non-European migrants became prevalent). At the same time, between the period of Reconstruction and the Great Migration, Americans of African origins became increasingly the target of processes of criminalization. Consequently, the number of migrants in prison became negligible, while the “overrepresentation” of African Americans became commonplace. Is there something to be learned today in Europe from such a story? Is there the danger that also in Europe there may be a possible shift from xenophobia to racism in processes of criminalization and prisonization? In this first, tentative, and for now descriptive, analysis, I present data taken from the recent Italian migration context in the last 30 years, connecting imprisonment rates and migrants’ nationalities, in order to start thinking some of these issues through.

Climate and environmental changes profoundly influence the movement of people, birds, and other species across the globe. The news is replete with stories of human migration, often portraying it as a crisis. Yet despite changes in movement patterns over recent decades, migration has been a natural phenomenon for millennia.

Let’s take the politics out of migration and pause to understand why birds and people migrate and what similarities and differences exist between their migration patterns. Let’s also consider what individuals, communities, and policymakers can do to rethink migration and develop sustainable solutions that recognize that we live in an interdependent world. Globally, we need solutions that benefit the planet and humans alike.

POSSIBLE LANDSCAPES

Directed by Kannan Arunasalam

Produced and conceptualized by Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas

"For no one had yet written of this landscape

that it was possible.”

Derek Walcott

A collaboration between a documentary filmmaker, Kanan Arunasalam and two professors, Tao DuFour (Architecture) a spatial theorist and Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature) a postcolonial comparatist and scholar of Caribbean thought, Possible Landscapes is the outcome of the team research project, “Possible Landscapes: Documenting Environmental Experience in Trinidad and Tobago,” funded through the Cornell Migrations Initiative team research grant for the Mellon Just Futures Initiative. The aim was to develop methods of field research and representation in documentary film that foreground intergenerational lived experience of landscapes and environments in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and to query the formation of environmental and climate imaginaries, with a view to getting at larger historical questions—of migration, plantation societies, extractivism, race, and the legacies of colonialism—that inform everyday practices in ways that are difficult to identify and to articulate, because they are concretely lived.

Possible Landscapes joins seven people in seven different regions of the islands in the course of their daily lives: Kevin, a fisherman on the east coast suffering the recent loss of one of his crew members at sea; four generations of the Josephs family in the steep hillsides of the northern range; Captain ‘Spaceman’ Philips and his glass-bottomed boat in Tobago from which he has witnessed the decline of the coral reefs; Crystal, a trade unionist active in supporting workers who lost their jobs when a major oil refinery was closed; Romulas, known as the “last sugar cane farmer” in the central plains and his Venezuelan workers; Stephanie a nurse who worked in the oil fields in the south starting just after World War II; Tony, originally from Jamaica, a climate change analyst, agriculturalist and rabbit farmer in St Joseph.

Co-sponsored with The College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office, The Society for the Humanities, Africana Studies and Research Center, Department of Architecture, Department of Comparative Literature, Department of Literatures in English, Environment and Sustainability, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Department of Romance Studies

Possible Landscapes is supported by a grant from Cornell University’s Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge and the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative.

All events are free and open to the public.

If you need accommodations to participate, please contact icm@cornell.edu as soon as possible.

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies funds international graduate student research!

Research travel grants provide international travel support for graduate and professional students to conduct short-term research or fieldwork outside the United States.

Global PhD Research Awards fund fieldwork for 9 to 12 months of dissertation research.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact einaudi_center@einaudi.cornell.edu.

***

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.

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.

***

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.

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.

Register for this virtual session.

***

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.

The Migration Studies Minor is a university-wide, interdisciplinary undergraduate minor that prepares students to understand the historical and contemporary contexts and factors that drive international migration and shape migrant experiences around the globe. This minor draws on the rich course offerings found across the humanities and social sciences at Cornell and is designed to draw students outside of their major fields and to extend their knowledge beyond a single country.

Is the Einaudi Center's International Relations minor for you? Here's a chance to find out. In the international relations minor, you study the politics, economics, history, languages, and cultures of the world and gain a fresh perspective on your major field of study. Graduates go on to successful careers in fields like international law, economics, agriculture, trade, finance, journalism, education, government service, and more.

Can’t attend? Contact migration-minor@einaudi.cornell.edu (Migrations) or irm@einaudi.cornell.edu (International Relations).

***

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.

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 has been cancelled. For more sessions on Global Internships, view the full calendar of info sessions.

***

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.