Events

The Anthropology and Sociology Program presents:

Winter 2017 Colloquium Series

A matter of justice or a global beacon?: frames of in/action regarding access to schooling for undocumented students in Toronto

Presented By: Francisco Villegas

Wednesday, February 22 | 10:55 am – 11:55 am | Arcus Center Seminar Room

In Ontario, Canada, K-12 schools serve as borders and often exclude undocumented migrant on the basis of status. At the same time, community activists have worked to erode border-zones and redefine “membership.” This paper examines the framing of undocumented students by different actors through the introduction, passing, and implementation of the Toronto District School Board’s “Students Without Legal Immigration Status Policy.” I argue that the framing of undocumented migrants played a significant role in the interpretation of the topic, passing of the policy, and its subsequent limited implementation. Specifically, the clash between administrators’ portrayal of undocumented migrants as likely to abuse the Board and local activists’ demands that no one is illegal served as a reminder on the limits of policy, the resilience of illegalizing and criminalizing tropes, and the need for continued organizing.

A matter of justice or a global beacon?: frames of in/action regarding access to schooling for undocumented students in Toronto flyer download (PDF)

HIV Vulnerability, Medical Governance, and the Erasure of Sexual and Gender Diversity in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Presented By: Matthew Thomann

Wednesday, February 8 | 10:55 am – 11:55 am | Arcus Center Seminar Room

In the fight against concentrated HIV epidemics, men who have sex with men (MSM) are often framed as a homogeneous population, with little attention paid to sexual and gender diversity and its impact on HIV vulnerability. Drawing on ethnographic research in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire among Ivoirian sexual and gender minorities, I show that this obfuscation of difference has particularly negative impacts for travestis, transwomen, and those whose class and/or ethnic backgrounds compound their stigmatized status as sexual and gender minorities. By highlighting the ways in which constructions of gender and sexuality within HIV/AIDS programming obscure complex social realities, I aim to reorient thinking around medical governance and global public health.

Society Must Be Defended: Inauguration Day Read-In of Foucault

Friday, January 20 | 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm | Hicks Lower Level

In solidarity with anthropologists across the country, the ANSO Department invites you to join us in a reading of Foucault’s eleventh lecture from the book Society Must Be Defended.

Fall 2016 Colloquium Series

Privatizing the doorstep: Struggles over solid waste collection markets in urban India

Presented By: Aman Luthra

Wednesday, October 26 | 10:55 am – 11:55 am | Arcus Center Seminar Room

Economic growth in Indian cities in the period following the liberalization of the Indian economy in the early 1990s has put tremendous pressure on urban infrastructures and services. In response to a growing infrastructure deficit, privatization emerged as the preferred mode of infrastructure delivery with a great sense of urgency. But privatization assumes prior government ownership of urban infrastructure assets and services. Certain aspects of waste management services such as waste collection have never been truly public, in the sense that private informal actors have historically provided those services in urban India. How does the state privatize something that was never in the public domain to begin with? Come find out!