DMC Inaugural Immigration Summit
On April 29, 2022, the DePaul DMC Immigration Summit convened in Chicago, uniting scholars, advocates, and community stakeholders to address crucial immigration and human rights issues. Topics spanned from crisis response and immigration enforcement to mental health concerns and climate change’s influence on refugee status. Beyond mere dialogue, the summit’s core objective was to foster collaboration, bridge theoretical and practical divides, and pave the way for enduring partnerships in tackling immigration challenges.
The day-long conference brought together scholars, advocates, students and practitioners from the midwest and beyond to share research and insights on significant developments in migration and human rights. 54% of attendees were DePaul alumni, almost all who work in immigration law or with community organizations that serve immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, 27% of attendees were community practitioners, and 19% were DePaul faculty. The majority of attendees were online – 77%, 23% were in-person. 80% of attendees were highly satisfied and 20% were satisfied with the conference. 65% of attendees found the conference to be very relevant, 27% found it relevant.
The aim of the Summit is to build bridges between professors, community partners, faith leaders, and others who are actively engaging and serving Chicago’s immigrant community. Feedback was very positive for achieving goals to: Lay the foundation for future collaborations at DePaul and in the Chicagoland area; Build bridges between scholars and community partners who are actively engaging and serving Chicago’s immigrant community, and Bring together the diverse faculty across many colleges at DePaul who study these issues.
Attendees identified key takeaways from the summit
- New insights into the immigration crisis today
- Clearly the answers to our immigration problems will require multi-disciplinary solutions. I love that DePaul is doing this difficult and necessary work.
- The importance of collaboration in moving forward the mission of justice for migrants and refugees. There is a huge interplay with law, social issues, health, when considering migration. Critical importance of collaborating across communities and expertise
Topics of interest for the future:
- Confronting and dismantling myths about immigrants in media and politics
- Why nativism is not just a US problem but seems to be a global challenge
- How inequities remain in subsequent generations and how systemic discrimination has affected the health and careers of later generations.
- Xenophobic hurdles to integration of immigrants, Class needs to be included as part of core identity
- Issues regarding undocumented elderly in the US and meeting their needs.
- More qualitative researchers
- More awareness of existing ties with community groups instead of pretending this is new
Attendees
There were 86 attendees; 50 in person and 36 online. Attendees included immigration attorneys, staff from community-based organizations, college students, university faculty and Some of the community agencies represented by attendees include (in addition to those represented by panelists)
Most of the attendees were from the greater Chicago area; online attendees joined from (states/towns)
There were 307 of people registered for the conference.
