This year’s Speaker Series will focus on the theme “Understanding Liminality and Legal Precarity.” Migration often involves uncertainty and feeling in-between: people are not quite here or there, settled or secure. This sense of being “in-between,” or liminality, shapes many migrants’ everyday lives. It can be made worse by legal systems and bureaucracy: waiting for asylum decisions, living in refugee camps, or holding temporary visas that offer little stability. Undocumented migrants face constant uncertainty—working and contributing to society while also being excluded or criminalized. Even those with permanent legal status can feel between places and identities, not fully included socially or legally. Legal uncertainties, what we call legal precarity, often overlap with other forms of inequality, such as racism, ableism, or discrimination based on sexuality. This year’s Speaker Series will explore how liminality and legal precarity shape the experiences of migrants. It will also highlight the resilience, creativity, and strength that people show in navigating these challenges.
These hybrid events will feature in-person speakers and will be held at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Dodson Room (302). Join us from 11:45 AM to 1:45 PM, with lunch served at 11:45 AM and talks beginning at 12:15 PM.
Save the dates!
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Monday, October 6, 2025, 11:45 AM – 1:45 PM
The Enduring Effects of Deterrence Border Regimes: Afghan Hazara Narratives of Social Dislocation in Australia
Helena Zeweri, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of British Columbia
In Australia, deterring ‘irregular migration’ encompasses a range of mechanisms, including placing migrants who take sea routes into offshore detention and prolonged temporary legal regimes. This talk analyzes the cumulative effects of deterrence that last well after migrants who arrive via boat are granted legal recognition as refugees. It does so through centering Afghan Hazara refugees’ experiences of prolonged temporary status as a question of personhood. By centering the framework of intersubjectivity, I argue that for those who have transitioned from temporary visas to permanent status in Australia, the cumulative effects of prolonged legal precarity have irreparably damaged prospects for family reunification and, by extension, refugees’ senses of personhood. Such experiences prompt a rethinking of deterrence as a spatially and temporally expansive regime of social dislocation.
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Monday, November 24, 2024, 11:45 AM – 1:45 PM
Exclusion By Design: Migrant Racialization and Temporary Legal Status
Ming Chen, Professor of Law, UC Law San Francisco | Director, Centre on Race, Immigration, Citizenship, and Equality
Migrants arrive in the United States on temporary visas ten times more often than on green cards, and more than half come from countries whose emigrants would be classified as non-White in the United States. Even so, immigration scholarship gives short shrift to temporary visas and treats them as race-neutral. This article contributes to the growing body of critical migration studies by demonstrating how immigration law assigns meaning to the race and legal status of temporary migrants. We find that temporary legal statuses are designed in ways that unnecessarily foster social exclusion through a process of racialization and hierarchical sorting by skills. Our empirical study of the distinctive experiences of three temporary worker categories deepens existing understandings of exclusion and racial subordination in the United States.
Temporary residents now make up a large share of Canada’s population, and as pathways to permanence contract, many face increasing precarity. Does the U.S. context offer lessons for Canada in this shifting context?
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Monday, February 2, 2025, 11:45 AM – 1:45 PM
The Regularization Maze: How Canada’s Temporary Migration System Manufactures Precarity
Delphine Nakache, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa
Drawing on the PRECAR project—a multi-year, multi-provincial study of precarious legal status trajectories in Canada—this talk presents findings from fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2022 across Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec (148 interviews with migrants holding temporary migration status and 62 key informants). Despite entering Canada legally, most participants failed to achieve permanent residence, with many losing status entirely by the time of the interview. The talk examines three interconnected mechanisms producing these outcomes: a maze of failed regularization attempts, temporary protection traps, and systematic rights gaps— revealing how Canada’s current temporary migration system manufactures precarity rather than providing pathways to integration.
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Monday, March 2, 2024, 11:45 AM – 1:45 PM
Margarita Mondaca, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy, Umeå Universitet
Margarita Mondaca is an occupational therapist specializing in mental health and human rights, with over 20 years of clinical and educational experience across Latin America, Sweden, and international contexts. Her work focuses on populations facing vulnerability and marginalization, with particular attention to the ethical dimensions these conditions raise. Grounded in a commitment to human rights and equity, she emphasizes how health and social participation are shaped by broader social, economic and historical forces. Her current research explores everyday life and vulnerability among people living in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas and subjected to reinforcing stereotyping discourses. She is also chair of the examination board and faculty member for the European Master of Science in Occupational Therapy.
