Jun
82024
archive
Join us for a talk and walking tour of the “Stories of Belonging” photo exhibit. Meet and listen to the project organizers and TPS community members speak about their experiences within the movement for migrant worker rights, immigrant worker justice, workplace justice, union organizing, and American rights of citizenship.
Speakers: Patricia Campos-Medina Sol Aramendi
Presented by:
Supported by:
This exhibit is part of the Cornell Migrations Just Futures 2022 Research Grant Initiative.
Displaced and Uprooted: Stories of Belonging, Central American TPS Workers’ Defiant Struggle for their Right to Stay Home in the U.S.
This project seeks to elevate the stories of workers with Temporary Protective Status (TPS) who, despite living at the margins of legality, have engaged in social movement organizing, participated in non-traditional political mobilization, and become agents for their own struggle for rights to belong to American society. The project seeks to understand if their history of claims making during the last 20 to 30 years has given them a sense of allegiance to American laws, morals, and values making them feel American in all but in their legal immigration status.
Co-principal investigator: Patricia Campos-Medina (Worker Institute, School of Industrial and Labor Relations)
Co-principal investigator: Ileen DeVault (ILR)
Collaborator: Sol Aramendi
Collaborator: National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)
Collaborator: National TPS Alliance (NYS affiliated chapters)
Join us for a talk and walking tour of the “Stories of Belonging” photo exhibit. Meet and listen to the project organizers and TPS community members speak about their experiences within the movement for migrant worker rights, immigrant worker justice, workplace justice, union organizing, and American rights of citizenship.
“Stories of Belonging: Central American TPS Workers’ Defiant Struggle to Stay Home in the U.S.” explores the historical engagement of TPS workers in this struggle. The project seeks to answer two seminal questions: After decades of living and working in the U.S., has the United States become their home? And if so, does the right of migrants to stay home include their right to define for themselves where home is at this moment in their lives?
Dr. Campos-Medina is a researcher, Cornell RTE Faculty, and labor educator focusing on the intersection of race, immigration status, and workers’ rights. She is a Senior Extension Associate Faculty and the Executive Director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, where she leads research, policy innovation, and training to advance worker justice, collective bargaining rights, and the interest of workers in today’s economy and society.
She is a political scientist and policy expert on workplace and labor issues, women rights, voting rights, immigrant worker justice, and US trade relations. She holds a PhD from Rutgers University and a BS and MPA from Cornell University. She is a member of Diverse Solidarity Economies (DISE), a collective of Black and Brown feminist scholars focused on research that decolonizes and diversifies the field of political economy. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Publications:
Beyond Racial Capitalism, Cooperatives in the African Diaspora. Edited by Caroline Shenaz Hossein, Sharon D Wright Austin and Kevin Edmonds. Oxford University Press. Chapter 4: Tandas and Cooperativas: Understanding the financial social economy of indigenous Mexican immigrants settled in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and Staten Island, New York, U.S. by Patricia Campos Medina, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University with Sol Aramendi and Erika Nava. Spring 2023: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/beyond-racial-capitalism-9780192868336?cc=us&lang=en&
Intersecting Power Approach to Immigrant Worker Justice. Darlène Dubuisson, Patricia Campos-Medina, Shannon Gleeson, Kate Griffith. (2023). Centering Race in Studies of Low-Wage Immigrant Labor. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2023 19:1, 109-129.
Not Legal. Not Illegal. Just TPS. Examining the Integration Experience of Central American Immigrants Living under a Regime of Long-Term Temporality. A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in the Division of Global Affairs, Rutgers University-Newark. Written under the direction of Dissertation Committee Chair: Dr. Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Rutgers University. Approved October 2019. https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/61647/
Current research underway:
Displaced and Uprooted: Stories of Belonging; Cornell Migrations/Carnegie Mellon Fund: Central American TPS Workers’ Defiant Struggle for their Right to Stay Home in US. This ongoing research project is funded by the Cornell Migrations Project (with funds from Carnegie Mellon Fam Fund). Expected publication Spring-Fall 2024
Education:
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD); Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Department of Global Affairs, Rutgers- Newark. October 2019
Masters of Public Administration (MPA). Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Cornell Institute of Public Affairs (CIPA). May 1997
Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Labor Relations (BS). Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, May 1996. Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR)
Sol Aramendi is a socially engaged artist and educator working with immigrant communities throughout New York. She is the founder of Project Luz, a nomadic program that uses art as a tool of empowerment. Project Luz Participatory Practice promotes change around fairer labor and immigration conditions.
The Worker Institute at Cornell engages in research and education on contemporary labor issues, to generate innovative thinking and solutions to problems related to work, economy and society. The institute brings together researchers, educators and students with practitioners in labor, business and policymaking to confront growing economic and social inequalities, in the interests of working people and their families. A core value of the Worker Institute is that collective representation and workers’ rights are vital to a fair economy, robust democracy and just society.
This website was made possible thanks to the generous support and partnership of 