Get Involved!

Fronteiras Cruzadas (external link) 

Migration Scholars Solidarity and Resistance Network. (external link) 

Websites & Media

1968: Columbia in Crisis (external link) . Columbia University Libraries.

Berman, P. (Spring 2018). Class of ‘68 (external link) . Dissent Magazine.

Beckermann, R. (Director). (2024). Favoriten (external link)  [Film]. Ruth Beckermann Filmproduktion.

Branco-Pereira, A., & Quintanilha, K. (2021). Deportação e trabalho escravo: Governo e Exército tornam política migratória um desastre humanitário  (external link) [Deportation and slave labor: Government and Army make migration policy a humanitarian disaster]. The Intercept Brasil. Karina Quintanilha Ferreira. Karina Quintanilha Ferreira (external link) .

How Black Students Helped Lead the 1968 Columbia U. Strike Against Militarism & Racism 50 Years Ago (external link) . Democracy Now! [Youtube].

Glick Schiller, N. (2024). The End of Migration as We Know It: Studying and Opposing Regimes of Dehumanization (external link) . Keynote, CMS International Research Conference 2024 [Youtube].

Policy & Reports

Enobabor, O. D., & Quintanilha, K. (2025). Contesting border violence from São Paulo to New York: How activist networks in Brazil and the United States confront the expanding architectures of border externalization and state-sanctioned violence (external link) . NACLA Report on the Americas, 57(4), 449–457.

Books

Assis, J. M. M. (1953). Dom Casmurro  (external link) (H. Caldwell, Trans.). Noonday Press. (Original work published 1899).

Basch, L., Schiller, N. G., & Blanc, C. S. (2020). Nations unbound: Transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments and deterritorialized nation-states (external link) . Routledge.

Çaglar, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2018). Migrants and city-making: Dispossession, displacement, and urban regeneration (external link) . Duke University Press.

Velasco, S. Á., De Genova, N., Dias, G., & Domenech, E. (Eds.). (2026). The Borders of America: Migration, Control, and Resistance Across Latin America and the Caribbean (external link) . Duke University Press.

Book Chapters

Ciubrinskas, V., & Glick Schiller, N. (2025).  (PDF file) Introducing the moral of the story: The transnationality of migrants’ moral economies in betwixt and between (external link) . In V. Ciubrinskas & N. Glick Schiller (Eds.), Transnationalities of migrant moral economies in a transforming world (pp. 1–27). Berghahn Books.

Glick Schiller, N. (2025). The twilight of transnational migration studies: Reframing concepts of time, space, and dispossession (external link) . In V. Ciubrinskas & N. Glick Schiller (Eds.), Transnationalities of migrant moral economies in a transforming world (pp. 29–56). Berghahn Books.

Glick Schiller, N. (2024). Debunking migration and development: A dispossession and displacement studies approach (external link) . In R. Delgado Wise, C.-U. Schierup, R. Munck, & B. Likić-Brborić (Eds.), Handbook on migration and development. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Glick Schiller, N. (2024). The twilight of transnational migration studies in a conjuncture of dispossession: An epistemological approach (external link) . In M. Fauser & X. Bada (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of transnational studies (pp. 13–29). Routledge.

Quintanilha, K., & Segurado, R. (2020). Migração forçada no capitalismo contemporâneo: Uma análise dos fluxos e da nova Lei de Migração no Brasil em crise [Forced migration in contemporary capitalism: An analysis of flows and the new Migration Law in a Brazil in crisis]. In Migrações em expansão no mundo em crise (external link)  (pp. 85–123). EDUC.

Academic Works

Baas, M., & Glick Schiller, N. (2024). Manifesto—The end of migration: Emerging trends and countervailing forces (external link) . Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 8(1-2). (external link) 

Blanc, C. S., Basch, L., & Schiller, N. G. (1995). Transnationalism, nation-states, and culture (external link) . Current anthropology, 36(4), 683-686.

Feldman-Bianco, B. (1992). Multiple layers of time and space: The construction of class, ethnicity, and nationalism among Portuguese immigrants (external link) . Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 645(1), 145-174.

Glick Schiller, N. (2023). Connecting place and placing power: A multiscalar approach to mobilities, migrant services and the migration industry. (external link)  Mobilities, 19(4). (external link) 

Glick Schiller, N. (2015). Explanatory frameworks in transnational migration studies: the missing multi-scalar global perspective (external link) . Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(13), 2275-2282.

Glick Schiller, N. (2023). “Migrants are the city”: Commentary on “London: Diversity and renewal over two millennia” by Anthony Heath and Yaojun Li. (external link)  Ethnic and Racial Studies. (external link) 

Glick Schiller, N. (2024). Migrant services and the reconfiguration of social reproduction as capital accumulation. (external link)  Dialectical Anthropology. Advance online publication. (external link) 

Glick Schiller, N.  (2018).  (PDF file) Theorising transnational migration in our times (external link) . Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 8(4), 201-212.

Glick Schiller, N. . (2005). Transnational social fields and imperialism: Bringing a theory of power to transnational studies (external link) . Anthropological theory, 5(4), 439-461.

Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., & Blanc, C. S. (1995). From immigrant to transmigrant: Theorizing transnational migration (external link) . Anthropological quarterly, 48-63.

Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., & Blanc‐Szanton, C. (1992).  (PDF file) Transnationalism: A new analytic framework for understanding migration (external link) . Annals of the New York academy of sciences, 645(1), 1-24.

Glick Schiller, N., & Salazar, N. B. (2013). Regimes of mobility across the globe (external link) . Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 39(2), 183-200.

Leacock, E., Abernethy, V., Bardhan, A., Berndt, C. H., Brown, J. K., Chiñas, B. N., ... & Wadley, S. S. (1978).  (PDF file) Women's status in egalitarian society: Implications for social evolution [and comments and reply] (external link) . Current anthropology, 19(2), 247-275.

Nash, J. (1981).  (PDF file) Ethnographic aspects of the world capitalist system (external link) . Annual Review of Anthropology, 10, 393-423.

Nash, J. (1994). Global integration and subsistence insecurity (external link) . American anthropologist, 96(1), 7-30.

Quintanilha, K. (2019). Apresentação: Nenhum ser humano é ilegal [Presentation: No human being is illegal]. Revista Fontié ki Kwaze, 1(1).

Ruseishvili, S., & Quintanilha, K. (2022). Brazilian migration regime and differential control of international mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic (external link) . Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales (REMI), 38(1), 89–111.

Sutton, C. R. (2004). Celebrating ourselves: the family reunion rituals of African‐Caribbean transnational families (external link) . Global networks, 4(3), 243-257.

Sutton, C. R. (1989). The Caribbeanization of New York City and the emergence of a transnational sociocultural system (external link) . Center for Migration Studies special issues, 7(1), 15-29.

Maggie Perzyna  

Welcome to Borders & Belonging, the podcast that explores migration through bold research new ideas and stories that connect those findings to the real world. This season, we're talking with migration scholars whose ideas have left a lasting mark on the field. Then we dig deeper to uncover the paths that brought them here, the turning points, lived experiences and insights that shape the theories redefining how we understand mobility, borders, and belonging. Each scholar has been asked to nominate an up and coming researcher whose work they admire. In the chat, established voices and emerging thinkers come together in conversation to explore the connective tissue between the past, present and future of migration studies. From the personal to the political, from theory to practice, these conversations uncover not just what our guests study, but how their lives and work have helped shape the field and where they see it heading next. 

Scholarly expertise is often the go to resource for any topic. One reason for that is the long history of research and data produced throughout the different eras of any particular study. But what happens when time resets the rules? Nina Glick-Schiller, Professor Emeritus at the University of Manchester and the University of New Hampshire, tackles this question. When Nina realizes that the current realities of migrants don't necessarily fit the narratives, beliefs, and findings of past scholars, her work helps spark a paradigm shift towards a new theoretical framework, transnationalism. Nina's journey begins in the Big Apple, New York City, surrounded by community and connection, but when her family moves, something changes. The world around her feels harder to read, and she begins to experience what it means to be seen as different.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

I began my life in New York City, an apartment building where people were very neighbourly and cooperated, and mothers played Mahjong on the sidewalk together, and people shared childcare. And then when I was five, I moved from New York City to a suburb. So, before that, I was curious, I was seen as bright, I was cheerful. And then I moved into this suburb, and I knew there was something really wrong, but I didn't know what it was. I was also an underachiever. I couldn't spell, I couldn't learn cursive writing. I read, but I couldn't read out loud. Looking back, it was probably dyslexia. I know it must have been, but I was just very frustrated and different, not just because of that, but because it was a very white, middle class Christian suburb, and I came from a Bronx Jewish family, and I didn't know what the problem was. I knew I was scapegoated by my elementary school teachers, and that's where the stubbornness comes in. I knew I was smart. I knew there was something wrong. I knew it wasn't me, but I couldn't understand why I couldn't do the things you were graded in terms of the neatness of your paper, how many ribbons you put on it, on your book report, not the content of the book report. This kind of tension and sense of actually resistance to oppression was part of my childhood.

Maggie Perzyna  

By the time Nina reaches young adulthood, she's already learned to question the limits placed around her. At.university, that instinct deepens. She encounters new ideas and mentors that help her begin to make sense of the tensions she grew up with.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

I'm the oldest of five children, and my father was a struggling pharmacist. Girls weren't expected to go to college. Girls were expected to become secretaries. If they went to college, they became teachers. And that was another thing. There was a gender dynamic in my family. My brother was expected to become a doctor, and people weren't against me going to college. They just weren't for me. They didn't see it as necessary, and my parents didn't have the money. So, I went where I got the biggest financial aid, and all through college, I worked extremely hard because I knew I could only go to graduate school if I got a fellowship, which I did in college. I had only a few women teachers, but one of them was an anthropologist, Connie Sutton, and she was a feminist and a leftist, and had a profound effect on me. Another one of the teachers gave us the feminine mystique to read by Betty Friedan. And that really turned me around, because I saw my mother's frustration there. I saw the family dynamics of gender there, and I understood a lot more about what had been going on in my childhood.

Maggie Perzyna  

Nina says she comes from the personal is political generation. Her time at NYU is when that mantra becomes woven into her everyday life and actions.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

Connie organized a teach in against the war in Vietnam, and that woke me up to what was going on in the world, and I became politically active, and I saw anthropology as always combining a sense of deep commitment to humanity and social justice with research. I never made this division between activism or pure scholarship. I felt that all scholarship was shaped by some politics and the question was, whose politics and for what purpose?

Maggie Perzyna  

During a training program on Vancouver Island, Nina begins to see her field differently. What she witnesses on the ground challenges the version of anthropology she has learned in the classroom.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

There was on Vancouver Island an empowerment movement, sort of a "Red power" movement. We were told not to participate, and we sort of snuck out and did a bit. I say we, because it was a training program, so there were a number of students, and we were put in different places. So, there was this tension between the kind of old fashioned anthropology, where you ignore all the colonial influences, all the racism, all the destruction, and you just try to reconstruct this ideal society and the actual conditions. The quality of housing changed very dramatically. The nutrition was bad, the incomes were bad. No one had ever gone to college. So, that was an eye opener. It was also an eye opener because I said, I want to do urban anthropology, and they put me in Nanaimo, and they said, well, this is a city, and I came from New York. I'd never seen a city where there were just one family houses. So, on many levels, it contributed to my anthropology and my political education. I did find the two oldest women, and they took me under their wing, and also taught me a lot about their childhood, about the coming of white people, about the taking of the land and the destruction of people's lives and their efforts trying to be successful, and how that was also destroyed, similar to the Cherokee, where people went along with the program and were still disenfranchised.

Maggie Perzyna  

In her early academic years, Nina finds a circle of mentors who influence not just what she studies but how she approaches scholarship itself. They offer an alternative to the competitive culture of academia.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

Because I was educated by a circle of feminists, Connie Sutton, June Nash, Eleanor Leacock, were my role models, and they worked and thought collaboratively, even if they didn't write collaboratively. I mean, I could see that scholarship was really a collaborative, collective enterprise, and there was a real push to be an individual. I mean, I really didn't fit into Columbia either. People had a different class background, higher class background, different kind of elite educations, and were into this competitive stuff. In fact, we were ranked. You took an exam in the first year, and then they publicly posted everybody's grade and ranking. I mean, they were did everything to make people competitive with each other, and I hated it. And then came the "68 and the uprising of the students, and we all put together collective discussions and resistance and committees, and I've always found that the only way to really do research is to collaborate with everyone who's involved in the project. And I've tried, whenever I could, to include the people, including the students, as coauthors, because I felt that we had all put the project together.

Maggie Perzyna  

Nina knew early on what she wanted to do, and she's grateful she's been able to pursue it, but finding a place for that work wasn't easy. Her path has taken time, persistence and a lot of improvising. 

Nina Glick-Schiller  

This has been what I've wanted to do, and I've been very lucky to be able to do it, although for many years, I couldn't find a job. I couldn't find a job as a full-time faculty member, because migration wasn't seen as part of anthropology, because the Caribbean I work with immigrants from Haiti wasn't seen as one of the areas that people studied in anthropology. There was just no job slot for that, and women weren't being hired much anyway. So, I did a lot of hunting and gathering in the academic world and learned a lot. I studied convicted arsonists, I studied people with AIDS. I studied networks of support and housing projects in the South Bronx. I've always seen myself as a scholar activist. I've been amused at the way it became sort of a professional topic somehow in anthropology, and you had to learn how to do it. And it seemed to me, just you had to do it. 

Maggie Perzyna  

As Nina's career evolves, so does her sense of purpose. She continues in the fight for a better world, a just world.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

I've struggled with my friends and colleagues to build a better world. You know, I think a more just and equitable world. I think most people around the world want that. The thing I like about anthropology, in part, is hanging out with people, and they want a different world. And you know, there's a handful of rich, powerful, billionaire people who get off on meanness and cruelty, and they're trying to run the whole world right now. So, I hope I'm remembered as somebody who contributed to taking it down and building something better, but I don't think it'll happen easily or peacefully, but the struggle continues

Maggie Perzyna  

From those early experiences onward, Nina's work is defined by a refusal to accept the field as it is and a drive to push it further, and if there's any doubt, her continuing activism is a testament to her belief that the personal truly is political.

Maggie Perzyna  

We've just heard how Nina's journey was shaped by her upbringing and her refusal to be defined by rigid gender norms and expectations, choosing instead to cover a path in a field where she often had to prove she belonged. Now joining the conversation is Karina Quintanilha. Karina is a lawyer and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo. Her work bridges the fields of Sociology of Law, labour studies and migration studies. Together, Nina and Karina bring different generational perspectives to our conversation about transnationalism, borders, and displacement. Thank you both so much for joining me today.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

Thank you. 

Karina Quintanilha  

Thank you, Maggie, for the invitation.

Maggie Perzyna

So, Nina, you're widely considered the central pioneer establishing transnationalism as a framework in migration studies, alongside with Linda Basch and Cristina Szanton Blanc. Can you take us back to those days and walk us through what you were thinking at the time?

Nina Glick-Schiller  

This was really a collective, collaborative project and it began actually in the Caribbean with Linda. I think people need to understand how ideas and changes in paradigm don't come from individual genius, but collective scholarships. So, Linda had been working with Caribbean scholars, Winston Wiltshire and also Joyce Tony, and they had been interviewing people in small Caribbean islands and in, I believe, New York City. And they realized that they never knew where people would be found, because they seem to be moving back and forth. Christina had worked in the Philippines, and suddenly, people she knew who were established in the Philippines showed up at her doorstep and asked her for sending back packages to the Philippines that were tax exempt, things to support their families. And I had been working with a team of Haitian scholars, and we had been studying Haitian organizations in New York. And every time we interviewed Haitian organizations, they said what we do here in New York is for Haiti. So, when Linda and Christine and I sat down to try to talk about migration, we realized that what we were experiencing and what was the daily life of migrants we knew did not fit into the way migration scholars had long talked about migration, and they had talked about people being uprooted, and even if they were talking about cultural pluralism or multiculturalism, it was within the state of settlement. There was very little discussion of transnational ties. So, we sat down and we said, we have to challenge the dominant paradigm. Took us a long time. We were all working mothers and with multiple tasking, but we felt this was really important. We, from the beginning, had an analysis of that, what we were seeing was linking to transformations in capitalism at that time in the Caribbean and the Philippines that took the form of structural adjustment, where people could no longer depend on their jobs and their infrastructure, their health care, their education was all being ripped away.

Maggie Perzyna  

Karina, when you encountered Nina's work, what did it allow you to see differently in your own research, and how does transnationalism show up in the lives you study now?

Karina Quintanilha  

I first connected with Nina's work while I was starting my PhD in Sociology at Unicampi, that is the University of Campinas in Brazil. In this time, I was very interested to analyze migration struggles during the Covid 19 pandemic in Brazil, and at that time, Nina's critiques on methodological nationalism, transnationalism, and the issues of the ethnic lenses were resonating and influencing the main debates on migration studies in Brazil. I have then proposed to organize an International online conference with Nina and Ayşe Çağlar. It was part of the third edition of the International Crossed Borders, and from that conference that was called, Reconfiguring Transnational Migration Studies: a Multiscalar and Conjunctural Approach that is still available online in our YouTube of Frontiers Cruzadas, I could really be influenced for my thesis and my ongoing work in different ways, and especially by this multiscalar analysis that helped me a lot to articulate the migrant struggles in Brazil as part of an articulated local, national and global process in the contemporary capitalism and all this violence that this system produce. Understanding that it also has to do a lot with the social relations that are structured within the international division of labour and reconfigured at the same time at the individual level and within the sphere of locality. So, in this sense, I can say that I could use a lot of this accumulated work through the times to understand especially how different modalities of transnational migration produces different forms of associativisms, networks of support and resistance in the city. So, in my case, I was very interested on how it was happening in the city of São Paulo, and particularly in the case of the periphery, because in the periphery, which is also a concept that I use to understand the realities of the migrants coming to Brazil and all the South to South migration.

Karina Quintanilha  

Nina, you've written about regimes of mobility, emphasizing that transnational ties are not just cultural, but deeply shaped by power and inequality. Why is that distinction so important?

Nina Glick-Schiller  

As I indicated, we were always looking at the power of the nation state that was defining how people understood migrants and migration, but also creating the conditions under whether which people can move or not move, and the categories through which people could move and how they're understood. And we're certainly seeing a lot these days about the restructuring of these categories. Bela Feldman Bianco contributed a great deal to this, because she was looking at the changing relationship between Portugal and its diaspora. Her research taught us to think about the role of nation state building in the construction of both our paradigms or categories through which we analyze migration. Working with Noel Salazar and also Pal Leary, we started to use the concept of regime of mobility as a way of doing this, and it was also a way to counter - as neoliberalism developed -. we hadn't originally used the term, but structural adjustment was the heart of a neoliberal policy of stripping away all worker protections, taking away all social institutions of support, creating an economy of austerity. As that took off, scholars just follow along, without stepping out, stepping back and trying to understand why the language is changing. And so scholars were suddenly into flows. Everything was flowing, people, ideas, waterfalls, electrons, they made migration look like something that's natural and inevitable. Now, humans have always migrated, but not with the same dynamic as waterfalls. So, we were trying to intercede in that moment and talk about the way regimes structure who can move, how they can move, and how they're they're seen. So, people who had been seen as migrant labour, as workers, when the economies got stripped of their industries, suddenly there was no allowing from labour migration, and the only way people could migrate was through asylum, and that, of course, also made sense, because people moved because their whole regimes were collapsing. So, both things were going on in the world at the same time. So we tried to look at these changes in language and how it linked to structures of power that were not just based in the nation state, but in intertwined, multiscalar networks of economic and political power,

Maggie Perzyna  

Both of you have advocated against treating migrants as permanently between places, Karina how does transnationalism help us move beyond that idea?

Karina Quintanilha  

The idea of migrants being in between places has a lot to do with the methodological nationalism and this nation state centrisms that somehow try to impose and to naturalize the idea that migrants should be fully assimilated in the country of destination. If we take a look on the literature on transnationalism, then we understand the big problems with the historical constructions of such concepts of integration, also the historic problematic with assimilation of migrants that had to do with social, veridical and cultural impositions and the production of inequalities. We can use the example of the prohibition of using one's mother's tongue in schools. In Brazil, there are still normatives which are contradictory to the federal legislation on migration that still prohibits that migrants speak their own native language in schools. And I also would like to recommend a movie that is called, 'Favoriten', which is a documentary with migrant children in a school in a proletariat neighborhood in Vienna. It is contemporary, and they follow these students for many years, and it has elements for us to understand these problematic ways that the state imagines on how these people should be integrated. And I think that in this sense, the transnationalism fundamentally questions the figures of the migrant as framed by integration. Migrants can be socially, economically and politically located in multiple places. At the same time, it has to do with the struggles of the right to stay and the right to belong.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

So, both of you in your answers have really touched upon this idea of the nation state, and this is still the way that we tend to study migration through that lens of the nation state. Why do you think it's so hard to step away from that? 

Nina Glick-Schiller  

The elites, you know, as we can see it with this billionaire class, are actually intertwined in multiple ways, across borders, but their legitimation projects, their hegemonic projects, the way they want people in each state to think is as if they live in a bounded unit in which they share an identity that's linked to some kind of this essential, historical, culturally uniform nation. This has never been the case. It's not true anywhere. Every single nation state is made up of multiple people who move from elsewhere. Humans have always migrated and nation state building, however, has been a political project that creates those who belong and their others their enemies. By creating borders, you create groups of enemies that you can blame, that you can arm against, that you can justify the creation of police states, military power. Everything we're seeing going on, both in the United States and all around the world.

Maggie Perzyna  

Karina?

Karina Quintanilha  

The creation and the amplification of fear from the others, is part of this strategy of the nation state power, and it has also to do with ideas related to the state racism and how part of those migrants are treated and criminalized and being more exposed to violence, For example, the cases of the Haitians in all countries, the Haitians in the diaspora are being a target of those politicians that are trying to create this fear that they might spread diseases, or on the other times they say that those migrants are responsible for the race of criminality, and all the statistics, all the data, shows it is not true. There are being instrumentalized by a lot of those groups that are attached with the transnational interests of the capitalist regimes all around the world.

Maggie Perzyna  

Let's maybe pull back a little bit. We often discuss transnationalism as a form of connection, but right now, looking at the aggressive nature of the ICE attacks, the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the constant raids, the acceleration of deportations. It really seems like we're watching the active destruction of transnational lives. When the state actively works to sever the ties between here and there, what happens to the social fabric of these communities? Nina, maybe let's start with you. You're based in the US, so you're really kind of living it right.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

Now, the full scale implications of what's happening here in terms of destruction and the implications of what's happening here in terms of resisting, envisioning a better world and taking back our aspiration for social justice are both happening. But the implications are also global, and often people forget that, because what has happened in the past decades is a remittance economy in which locations all around the World are supported by remittances from the United States and from Europe also. That means towns, education, infrastructure, nutrition are all sustained by the labour of people working someplace else and sending money home. But when this behaviour is defined as criminal, and even having connections to another society makes you suspect, then the people who have already settled and built businesses and have jobs being uprooted and dumped back in the country, this is a disruption of the entire world, and they're really going to reap the whirlwind. We can't even begin to imagine the degrees to which the world is going to be reorganized, hopefully in ways that will challenge the system. But right now, the whole world is up for grabs, I would say. How we organize, how we understand, how the migrants communicate through their networks, about what's going on, how we analyze it and envision a different system will determine the future of the entire planet. Because given what's happening with the climate, we don't have a lot of time. 

Nina Glick-Schiller  

Karina, what do you see in your work?

Karina Quintanilha  

Historically, in most of the countries that has a history of migration, we can say that state violence against migrants has been a rule, not the exception. For example, I have studied the exclusion policies. of migrants in Brazil, and since the beginning of the 20th century, migrants involved with Capoeira practice, which is practices influenced by the African diaspora in Brazil, could be punished with expulsion, and it lasted until the last dictatorship we had, and it was still on the legislation after our federal democratic constitution. So, I think we have to have this critical perspective and historical perspective to understand the changes on how state violence has been applied against migration. It's very clear that today, the difference is the scale and also the creation of a global regime of immobilities. We have learned already from the pandemic crisis that even if the state puts more barriers and makes it more difficult for migrants to cross borders, migrants will find ways to cross, to create new ways to survive. But this exploitation of these routes and these migration corridors like new networks of support, but at the same time, networks of other social actors that has lot of powers and might exploit and hurt those people.

Maggie Perzyna  

So, both of you have really put a lot of emphasis on the importance of working with other scholars, and really underscored the fact that you don't work alone. You work within a community of academics. So now, in your current work, mobilizing scholars globally, how are you translating that academic web into a political force that can effectively protect migrant rights in an increasingly nationalist era? I know that you're both very active, so the question is, for both of you.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

One of the things that's going on is it's becoming criminal, defined as an act of terror, to stand with migrants. So we put out this statement that 4000 people signed it globally, and we formed an active network that both can link up people's struggles and get out the word of what people are doing globally, and also take action, pull people into active conversation. I'd like to say that in putting this together, we understood that acts on migrants are part of a larger attack, really, the attack on the Palestinians and on Gaza and the allowing of genocide and the normalization of genocide is sort of the foundation that allows them to do the dehumanization that we're seeing in in the US and in Brazil and the UK and so many places. The silence about the massacre that just went out on in Iran is part of that fact that cities are being blockaded and under siege, and Kurdish scholars are reaching out for help and are not being heard, speak to the need for us to stand up against these attacks in Latin America. And we learned so much from the Brazilian and the Latin Americans, because they've never made this division between social movements and scholarship. There's organic connections. But in other places in the world, we've been educated to say that if we take a political position, then somehow our scholarship is a question. Of course, that's a political position which is so visible now, where silence is complicity to allow the dehumanization of working people, migrants. So, this network really speaks to that, not only talking to university people, but trying to find and learn ways to talk to the larger society. And in about two weeks, we're going to have a global panel and discussion about what's happening in Minneapolis, to say we need to learn from Minneapolis and the lessons need to be applied globally.

Maggie Perzyna  

Karina, maybe we can end off learning about some of the work that you're doing.

Karina Quintanilha  

Yes, it will be a pleasure to share the work we have been doing with the International Forum Crossed Borders that we started in 2017 in the University of São Paulo, and at that time we figured out that there were many spaces in the academy that were debating about migration, but without the participation and the involvement of migrants. So, we managed to create this network with the participation of the associations of migrants, mainly São Paulo, and especially the Social Union of immigrants from Haiti, and also many association of the Bolivians migrants in São Paulo that nowadays they are the biggest migrant community in the city. The Forum has been working to organize debates and connections with networks internationally. This is also how we met with Nina and also other scholars. Right now, we are working on this event with Nina, on the situation that is going on in the US, and how also as scholars, we have this responsibility, and we have a role, and we can contribute on the question on the role of the university in this context of multi-dimensional crisis, we are living like economic, political, social, but also environmental crisis that will impact us all globally. We are also working in the fifth edition of the International Forum at the University of São Paulo. And everybody that is interested in our work can find more information in our website, https://fronteirascruzadas.com.br. And I would also like to add, just to finish, that one of the big achievements we had last year was the work with the University [unclear] in the University of São Paulo, that we have been able to recognize the leaderships of the peripheric migrant associations in São Paulo as social researchers that has a lot to contribute to the university, so we managed to also guarantee some scholarships for them, and we are having lots of beautiful exchanges and creating more knowledge about the migration phenomenon. We also have many also cultural events and cinema exhibition that everybody is invited to get to know 

Maggie Perzyna  

Well, Thank you both so much for sharing your scholarship. I will be sure to put all those links in our show notes so our listeners can find you and connect further. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Okay, we're gonna do like a little quick lightning round. This is literally just whatever comes to the top of your head. Nina, what's your favorite book?

Nina Glick-Schiller  

I don't have a favourite book. I have many books that I've used. After all, it's been a long lifetime already.

Maggie Perzyna  

Okay, nothing comes to mind. Karina?

Karina Quintanilha  

Okay, so can be Dom Casmurro from Machado de Assis, a classic one from Brazilian writer.

Maggie Perzyna  

Nina, what policy buzzword do you think should disappear?

Nina Glick-Schiller  

It's an interesting question, because words are being turned around. So freedom, liberty, justice, look at the US Department. Move from defense to war was a struggle for every single one of these words and what they mean. It's very hard to communicate with people when everything's being redefined.

Maggie Perzyna  

Karina, do you have a policy buzzword that's particularly irksome?

Karina Quintanilha  

I would say integration.

Maggie Perzyna  

You're not alone, you're not alone. That one comes up a lot! 

Karina Quintanilha  

Yeah.

Maggie Perzyna  

Nina, do you have a favorite place that you've done field work?

Nina Glick-Schiller  

I have a great love for Haiti. I miss it. It's very dangerous to be there right now. But I've also learned a lot from Germany, New York City, Manchester, UK, Manchester, New Hampshire, and I like my time in Campinas too.

Maggie Perzyna  

Karina?

Karina Quintanilha  

I would say, housing occupation of Bolivian migrants in São Paulo, and also the woman's penitentiary in São Paulo. I had the opportunity to meet with migrant women that was imprisoned, but it was during a singing meeting like for them to sing with their own cultures, remembers and it was so beautiful.

Maggie Perzyna  

Final question, what is one thing about you that we can't learn from your CV?

Nina Glick-Schiller  

My political history.

Maggie Perzyna  

Karina?

Karina Quintanilha  

I would say that I love Samba and carnival, and I was part of neighbourhood samba school called Vai Vai, which I'm very proud of also.

Maggie Perzyna  

Amazing. Well, thank you both for being so generous with your time, and honestly for all the work you still do and how active you are, it's so important.

Nina Glick-Schiller  

Thank you. 

Karina Quintanilha  

Thank you, Maggie.

Maggie Perzyna  

Thanks so much to Nina Glick Schiller and Karina Quintanilha for joining me today, and thank you for listening. This episode was produced by Toronto Metropolitan University journalism student, Kristian Cuaresma, alongside executive producer Angela Glover. Special thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and CERC Migration for making this conversation possible. If you're enjoying Borders & Belonging. Follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you, get your podcasts and share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn. For more information on how to join the Migration Scholars Global Solidarity and Resistance Network, check out the show notes. I'm Maggie Perzyna. Thanks for listening.