Immigration and Metropolitan Revitalization in Philadelphia and Nationwide

219 South 6th Street,Philadelphia PA 19106

16 December, 2021

Description

Two leading scholars of immigration and urban history will explore the multiple effects of immigration and immigrants on the places we live. Immigrants have played central roles in the revitalization of cities and suburbs across the Philadelphia region and the nation, but not always in the ways that popular narratives suggest. This conversation with two leading scholars of immigration and urban history will explore the multiple effects of immigration and immigrants on the places we live. How did immigration turn around decades of urban decline across the United States? How and why have Pennsylvania and the nation developed such a fractured landscape of pro- and anti-immigrant politics? In the wake of the Trump administration's efforts to restrict immigration, what challenges and opportunities lay ahead for immigration and cities? About Domenic: Domenic Vitiello is a professor of city planning and urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania. For the past two decades, he has worked with diverse immigrant communities in U.S. cities, and now in southern Italy. He has helped lead the boards of organizations in Philadelphia’s African and Mexican communities; assisted refugee resettlement agencies in growing their capacity to support housing and employment; helped the City of Philadelphia expand language access and its office of immigrant affairs; collaborated with home associations of Mexican and African migrants in transnational community development; and currently works with the migrant city council of Palermo, Italy, in support of migrant associations’ local and transnational work. Domenic has authored books and articles on migrant civil society, sanctuary cities, and the relationships between immigration and urban revitalization, including the edited volume Immigration and Metropolitan Revitalization in the United States and the forthcoming book The Sanctuary City. About Andrew: A. K. Sandoval-Strausz is Director of Latino Studies and Associate Professor of History at Penn State University. He was born in New York City to immigrant parents, went uptown to college at Columbia University, and then on to the University of Chicago for his PhD. He teaches courses in Latino studies, immigration history, and urban history, and his research has explored mobility, migration, and immigration. He is the author of Hotel: An American History (Yale University Press), Making Cities Global: The Transnational Turn in Urban History (University of Pennsylvania Press), and most recently Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City (Basic Books), which won the Caroline Bancroft History Prize and was a finalist for the Victor Villaseñor Book Award. The Athenaeum was established in 1814 as a subscription library, at a time when the free public library system did not exist and collections of books, available for reading or research, were still mostly limited to institutions, schools or colleges. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia nurtures curiosity in members and neighbors, strengthening community through learning and discourse. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia is one of 16 membership libraries that collaborate through the Membership Libraries Group. Some, like the Charleston (est. 1748), New York Society (est. 1754), and Newport (est. 1741) libraries, date from the 18th Century.