Museums as Allies: Mobilizing to Address Migration

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the authors

Patricia Lannes is a cultural worker with over 20 years of experience in the museum education and visual literacy fields. She is a native of Uruguay. Her immigrant experience has shaped her professional life and helped her design frameworks and initiatives for transforming museums into safe, relevant and welcoming civic spaces. She regularly consults with museums, educational institutions and community-based organizations on inclusive practices, audience development and user centered programming. Her professional development and training practice includes effective engagement strategies for working with language learners, immigrant, refugee and family audiences. She is the founder of CALTA21, an initiative where museum professionals, language instructors and immigrants and refugees are trained to use works of art, personal narratives and museums to break language barriers and build academic, social, and cultural capital. Through her work with CALTA21 she was nominated as a White House Champion of Change, an award for Americans with innovative ideas who are making a difference in their communities. Lannes is the former Director of Education at the Nassau County Museum of Art, New York and is the former Chair of the Latino Network of the American Alliance of Museums.

Lauren Monsein Rhodes, PhD, is an ethnographer and qualitative researcher currently based in Chicago who has consulted on projects for Slover Linett Audience Research and Novo Nordisk, among others. Her prior engagements include Senior Education Manager at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Assistant Professor in the Cultural and Social Anthropology Program at University of Latvia and Visiting Lecturer at RISEBA Faculty of Architecture and Design. In her independent research work, she has been involved in projects focused on Third-Country Nationals (immigrants or migrants that are neither Latvian nor European Union citizens) in Latvia, as well as wrote and presented on the discourse of difference among individuals of black African descent in Latvia. Her written work has appeared in Echo Gone Wrong, Moore Women Artists (blog), Satori, and the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) publication Invisible Visible Minority: Confronting Afrophobia and Advancing Equality for People of African Descent and Black Europeans in Europe. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Oberlin College, a MSEd in Museum Education from Bank Street College of Education, and a PhD in Anthropology from University of Washington. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Museum Education Roundtable (MER).

Notes

1 Allen et al., “Who Counts in Crises?” 227.

2 UNHCR, “Figures at a Glance.”

3 Barry and Sorensen, “In Denmark, Harsh New Laws for Immigrant ‘Ghettos.”

4 IOM Thailand, “Labour Migration.”

5 Bylander and Reid, “Criminalizing Irregular Migrant Labor.”

6 Meyer et al., “Workplace and Security Stressors.”

7 See also Meyer et al., “Gender Differences in Violence.”

8 İçduygu and Diker, “Labour Market Integration,” 12–13.

9 Ibid.

10 Akcapar, “Turkey Stands.”

11 Lerner, “Turkish Hostility.”

12 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Chicago Jews for Refugees Assembly.

13 Fix and Capps, “Leaked Draft of Possible Trump Executive Order on Public Benefits Would Spell Chilling Effects for Legal Immigrants.”

14 International Organization for Migration, “Key Migration Terms.”

15 United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, “UNHCR Viewpoint.”

16 Carr, A Place is Not a Place, 62.

17 Oldenburg, The Great Good Place, xvii.

18 See also: Meyer et al., “Gender Differences in Violence.”

19 Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital.”

20 Putnam, “Tuning In, Tuning Out,” 664–5.

21 Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” 47–8.

22 Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital.”

23 Ng et al., “Activating Diversity and Inclusion.”

24 Golding, “Collaborative Museums,” 14.

25 Ibid.

26 H-Migration, “CfP (conference).”