A virtual book discussion on Tahseen Shams' Here, There, and Elsewhere

Join us on Thursday, September 10, at 1 PM (ET) / 12 PM (CT) / 10 AM (PT) as Tahseen Shams discusses her brand-new book Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World. David Scott FitzGerald (University of California San Diego), Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College), and Robert Smith (The Graduate Center, CUNY) will be the discussants, and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (University of Southern California; the co-editor of the Globalization in Everyday Life series) will serve as the moderator.

Tahseen’s book breaks new ground by showing how immigrants are vectors of globalization who both produce and experience the interconnectedness of societies—not only the societies of origin and destination, but also, the societies in places beyond. It posits a new concept for thinking about these places that are neither the immigrants' homeland nor hostland—the "elsewhere." Drawing on rich ethnographic data, interviews, and analysis of the social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, Tahseen uncovers how different dimensions of the immigrants' ethnic and religious identities connect them to different elsewheres in places as far-ranging as the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.

Tahseen Shams is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, and the Bissell-Heyd Research Fellow of the Centre for the Study of the United States at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. 

David Scott FitzGerald is Theodore E. Gildred Chair in U.S.-Mexican Relations, Professor of Sociology, and Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego. FitzGerald’s books include Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers (Oxford University Press 2019), winner of the American Sociological Association (ASA) International Migration Section Best Book Award; Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas (Harvard University Press 2014), whose awards include the ASA Distinguished Scholarly Book Award, and A Nation of Emigrants: How Mexico Manages its Migration (University of California Press 2008).

Peggy Levitt is Chair and Professor of Sociology and the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies at Wellesley College and an Associate at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She is also the co-founder of the Global (De)Centre. Her seminal books include Transnational Villagers (University of California Press 2001; Honorable Mention for the Thomas and Znaniecki award of the International Migration section at the American Sociological Association, and for the Best Book Award of the New England Council on Latin American Studies), God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (The New Press 2007), and Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display (University of California Press 2017). Her next book Move Over, Mona Lisa. Move Over Jane Eyre. looks at inequality at the global cultural stage.

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Her areas of research include labor, gender, international migration and human trafficking, the family, and economic sociology.

Robert Courtney Smith is Professor of Sociology, Immigration Studies and Public Affairs at the School of Public Affairs, and in the Sociology Department, Graduate Center, CUNY. His first bookMexican New York: Transnational Worlds of New Immigrants (University of California Press 2007) won the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Award and three other sectional prizes (for immigration, Latino/a sociology, and community and urban sociology) and a Presidential prize from CUNY. His next books are titled Horatio Alger Lives in Brooklyn, But Check His Papers (California, forthcoming), This Is Still America! Contested Political Integration in Port Chester, and Mexicans in the US and the Seguro Popular Healthcare Program: How Diasporic Bureaucracies Should Communicate with Migrants (under contract with Palgrave, Pivot Series).

This event is free but you will need to register. We’ll send you the Zoom link shortly before the event.