Elon faculty & students attended the Forced Migration Institute, presenting and participating in discussions on current refugee and immigrant policies
Faculty and students from Elon School of Law and the university’s Human Service Studies, Psychology and Communications departments recently participated in the Forced Migration Institute at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The event was attended by about 100 faculty, students, refugee resettlement and social service practitioners and was held at the UNCG Alumni House. Heather Scavone, director of the Humanitarian Immigration Law Clinic and assistant professor of law, delivered a presentation about “Immigration Today: Policy Changes Under the Trump Administration.”
Psychology major David Duncan ’19 and a UNCG student presented their undergraduate research and findings. The title of Duncan’s presentation was “Finding Meaning in the Darkness” and his research topic, which he’ll continue in the 2018-19 school year, is titled “The Deportation Threat and Its Health Impact on Hispanic Immigrant College Students.”
Carmen Monico, assistant professor of human service studies, distributed a handout on Displacement of (Un) Accompanied Minors from Central American Northern Triangle (CANT) Nations: Forced Family Separation as Child Abduction & Human Trafficking in the U.S. The handout is based on a poster shown in the Lindner Building this year, and Monico’s column published in the Greensboro News and Records titled “Border Crisis Tests our Moral Decency.”
Monico and Sana Haq, assistant professor of communications, helped facilitate roundtable discussions on local effects of immigration policies. During the break-out groups, participants discussed their knowledge of policy, health, forced family separation, support for undocumented community members, and innovative resettlement practices, including what they were doing or can do to identify key strategies and solutions, maximize collective resources, focus on collaboration, and plan for next steps.
All three Elon faculty expect to present on refugee and migration concerns at the fall COR forums, specifically the “The impact of globalization in an increasingly connected, technological, and rapidly changing world, with a focus on the themes of refugees, human trafficking and immigration” forum.