Baruch Professor Joins International Group to Secure $2 Million Grant to Study Migration and Urban Citizenship
August 17, 2021
Professor Els de Graauw, PhD, will join a team of 36 international academics to study approaches to migrant and refugee settlement. The group aims to help urban decision makers develop innovative policies of migrant and refugee inclusion.
Baruch College Professor Els de Graauw, PhD, is among an international group of scholars who secured $2 million in funding to study migration and urban citizenship,
The seven-year grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will fund a collaborative project involving 36 scholars and 36 community partners, titled, “Urban Sanctuary, Migrant Solidarity, and Hospitality in a Global Context.”
“This grant offers tremendous opportunities to study, with leading scholars and practitioners worldwide, grassroots efforts to provide urban sanctuary to migrants,” said Dr. de Graauw, who is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the Weissman School. “I will focus my research on New York City, and I look forward to collaborating with urban citizenship scholars in Latin America, Africa, and Europe.”
The international group was formed by Professor Harald Bauder at Ryerson University and includes scholars from top institutions around the world, including the University of Oxford, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Ghana. According to their grant application, the group is studying how cities respond to and accommodate vulnerable migrant populations, including refugees and asylum seekers.
By analyzing these different policy approaches, the scholars and their community partners hope to achieve the following goals:
- “Building and enhancing urban capacities to accommodate vulnerable migrants and refugees through international collaboration, networking, and knowledge exchange between researchers, practitioners, and urban policy makers.
- Developing novel municipal and community-based policy frameworks to facilitate innovative and evidence-based policy making at local and municipal levels for accommodating vulnerable migrants and refugees.”
Professor de Graauw, who is also deputy director of The CUNY Graduate Center’s International Migration Studies Master’s degree program, will be teaching a new course on immigrant cities at Baruch’s Marxe School for the Fall 2021 semester.
The new course, “Immigrant Cities,” will explore the contemporary politics and policies of immigration and immigrant integration in U.S. cities. The course will focus on the role of governmental and nongovernmental actors in enacting and implementing city policies affecting immigrant communities, including those addressing language access, municipal ID cards, labor rights, noncitizen voting, access to health care, and policing.
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