Podcast: Sexual Identity, Inclusion, and Community on Campus

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A month filled with barbeques and baseball games, June is also an important month for the LGBTQ+ community. Queer people and their allies celebrate Pride Month with festivals, parades, and artistic reflections on the progress made toward political inclusion since the Stonewall Riots in 1969. We’ve come a long way since then. In 2015, the US Supreme Court legalized marriage equality with the Obergefell v. Hodges decision -- a case that originated in Cincinnati! 

At the University of Dayton, community is a key institutional value. Although we do not collect demographic information on the undergraduate population’s sexual identities, the American College Health Association estimates that 10% of college students identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, asexual, pansexual, or questioning. Moreover, the numbers may be higher because the development of sexual identity is in flux over the course of a young person’s life. Yet regardless of whether students are out and proud, closeted, or questioning, they are still likely to be affected by microaggressions and bias incidents that occur on campus.

In Spring 2020, we enrolled in Dr. Jamie L. Small’s sociology class on Sex, Crime, and Law. Our discussions ranged from domestic violence to mass incarceration to pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. For our final project, we were tasked to develop a podcast that investigated broader course themes. We brainstormed ideas at the beginning of the semester, and then Dr. Small placed in groups based on shared interests. The unexpected campus closure in March created new barriers to making a podcast -- a project that neither of us had done before! After consulting with Dr. Small, though, we decided to continue with the podcast because documenting the micro- and macro-aggressions that LGBTQ+ students experience on campus is really important work. 

We learned a lot and would like to share the podcast and some of those findings with you.

Spectrum is UD’s LGBTQ+ student organization. The group is comprised of dedicated students who strive to help make other LGBTQ+ students on campus know they are safe to be themselves, while being transparent about the challenges. Spectrum provides aid, support, and a safe space for LGBTQ+ students and their allies. For instance, through one initiative “Know Your Rights,” Spectrum’s members learn about what microaggressions are on campus; how to report them; and the resources available to them. 

One moment of hostility for which Spectrum provided critical support occurred last fall. Early in September, vandalizers ripped down rainbow flags -- symbols of solidarity and the queer community -- from the Spectrum South Ally House. The flags were later found in a nearby garbage can. Similar incidents happened two more times during the semester, and a memorial for Transgender Day of Remembrance was also vandalized.

President Eric Spina wrote an email to the campus community denouncing this bias-related vandalism. He wrote:

“We condemn this act as incompatible with our Catholic, Marianist values and our commitment to create an environment where all feel safe, supported, valued and respected. We are all called to safeguard the dignity of every person in thought, word and action, and to work together to strengthen our sense of community. This is an offense not only against certain members of our community but, indeed, an offense against the entire University community.”

While these kinds of bias-related incidents are noticeable on campus, microaggressions can be harder to see.

In the podcast, you will hear interviews that we conducted with Chloé Massie-Costales and Laura Hutchinson. They discuss their respective experiences with the LGBTQ+ community at UD. Chloé Massie-Costales is graduated this May with a degree with sociology, and during her time at UD, she was deeply involved with Spectrum. She helped us understand what bias-related incidents look like for students and how the campus climate regarding these incidents has changed over her five years on campus. Laura Hutchinson, also a UD alum, is coordinator of LGBTQ+ Support Services at the Brook Center. She explained the nuances of micro- and macro-aggressions and how bias-related incidents negatively impact LGBTQ+ students in higher education.

After talking with Chloé and Laura, we then discuss how Title IX, legal protection against discrimination on the basis of sex, does not explicitly extend to the LGBTQ+ community. We pivot to examine some of the policies that UD has in place to ensure its students are protected, whether it is in the Non Discrimination Statement or in policies such as the Chosen Name Policy.

We hope that our podcast can help listeners understand and learn about the bias-related incidents that can happen on any college campus. We hope that our listeners will become more aware of the different ways these violent incidents occur and how they can affect their peers, friends, and even family members. We hope to inform students of resources on our campus and what UD does to support them. We hope our listeners understand that using expressions such as, “That’s so gay” is harmful because it’s basically saying, “you are wrong.” 

No human is wrong. 

We also understand that social change is not something that happens overnight. While incredible strides have been made in the past few decades, it is clear that there is still so much to be done. But to be silent is to be complicit. By speaking out and educating others, we hope to make a change in people’s everyday lives. 

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Authors and Podcast Creators in Sociology 329 "Sex, Crime, and Law" course:

• Jessie Starkweather'22 (She/Her/Hers) is a Criminal Justice major
• Chris Reynolds'21 (They/Them/Theirs) is a Computer Science major

Dr. Jamie Small is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work and a Human Rights Center Faculty Research Fellow at the University of Dayton.

Chaim’s Tattoo

Every year on Passover, Jews celebrate the exodus from Egypt, the journey from slavery to freedom. This month, the world also marks the liberation of Nazi concentration camps that accompanied the end of World War II, seventy-five years ago. The essay below was originally prepared for remarks I delivered in November 2019 at UD’s Kristallnacht commemoration and I felt it appropriate to share again, this time on the HRC blog, since the man featured in the story, my grandfather, my Zayde, emerged from his personal horror on April 11, 1945. 

While Jewish holidays cover and capture many themes, a constant concept is time--pausing from daily life to reflect, practice, and spend time with family and in community. Connected to notions of time is the imperative to carry history into the present to provide essential perspective. In this spirit, I offer a story about my family and our engagement with our past. 

- JRP

Chaim’s tattoo was a faded six-digit number on the inside of his left forearm - 184569. He told his three children, including my mother, that the tattoo contained the phone number of an old girlfriend. Chaim was my grandfather, my Zayde, a quiet, warm, and strong man, who never spoke about the war. My grandmother, my Bubby, who survives him to this day, shudders when we bring it up. She’ll talk about the good times -- the years in this country since they immigrated -- but not the bad. Our family stories about the Holocaust were vague: like a fable with enough storyline to be compelling but not enough detail to be satisfying. Because Zayde preferred not to talk about it, to protect his family from the harm he suffered and to protect himself from reliving his trauma, I grasped tightly to the broad strokes of his triumph and assumed the particulars of how it all happened were lost to history. 

This is in spite of the fact that history lived on all around us: Holocaust survivors sat in the pews next to us in shul, sharing wine and herring with us during kiddush, many of whom we knew bore the same marks on their arms as my Zayde did. These marks were visible on the men donning t’fillin, the leather straps men wear at morning prayers, faded as they were among the sagging bicep skin.

At my Jewish day school, Holocaust education was a mainstay of our curriculum. Elie Weisel and Anne Frank, Yom Hashoah and Kristallnacht. During commemoration events, we sang somber songs with yellow candles glowing, illuminating dark rooms and ritualizing memorials to the mass murder of six million people like me. We sang, “Ani ma’ameen b’emunah sh’lemah b’viat hamashiach” or “I believe with complete faith in the coming of the messiah.” World-historic catastrophe would produce future salvation. Jewish existence in the US in the late-20th century was mediated wholly through the experience of the Holocaust--it told us who we were and reminded us that, but for the grace of god, were we here at all. 

For my family, it was our story but telling the story always felt disappointing. We knew the final tally but lacked the box score or the play-by-play. We just didn’t know. Sentences trailed off into shrugs and ended with a question mark, rather than a period. What we did know and at the core of our narrative was that my Zayde overcame the worst things humanity could hurl at him and did it while protecting his family. He was more than a survivor. He was a hero. But maybe that’s just my reading--meaning I construct and impose on a story whose specifics are blurry.

Chaim Feder was born in 1918 in Pilica, Poland, a small town, and later moved by horse and wagon to a larger municipality a few miles away, to Sosnoweic. He was one of six children, three of whom would survive though their parents would not. Much of this story was recounted by one of Chaim’s surviving siblings, his sister Chana, my great-aunt. When the Germans invaded in 1939, Sosnoweic was locked down and transformed into a ghetto. In 1942, the Nazis began to liquidate the ghettos.  The Jews of Sosnoweic were brought to the “sportz platz” or stadium. Chaim’s and Chana’s parents got dressed up: mother Rivka in a wig and a dress her daughter had made and father Mayer in a jacket and tie. 

I am infatuated with the image of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother showing up to their own murder in formal wear. They knew what was happening to them and what was about to happen and dressed for the occasion. At least that’s how I choose to understand it. I wonder what I would wear to my execution. My Zayde, later in the US, grew to be a man of style. A brown leather coat that was his, with soft black cotton lining and wide notch lapels, hangs in my closet now. When I first came across the coat, it was too big for me in the shoulders and the chest. In my mother’s house hangs photos of Bubby and Zayde pushing a baby stroller through Newark, New Jersey on the weekend, in a dress and a suit. Smiling. 

Rivka and Mayer stood overnight at the sports arena in the rain, after they had been separated from their children. Chaim escaped, as he did often, and returned with bread, which he threw through the window of the arena. From the sports platz, their parents were moved to a school and then to the train station. Chana last saw them through the window of the train as it departed for Auschwitz. Her mother was crying. 

In 1942, Chaim was removed from the ghetto and placed into the broader camp system but there the trail ran cold. We never learned what happened between then and the end of the war. 

We knew he had been to awful places like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. We knew he met and married my Bubby on August 24, 1948 in the Hasenhacke displaced persons camp after the war, where he had a leather shop that allowed him to earn and save. Zayde was an attractive mate for my Bubby, because he had money and she had nothing. Post-war families were often relationships of convenience, not of love. So accustomed to survival, I wonder if their higher-order functions, like loving and being loved, were working properly. Chaim’s sister had been married back in Poland and became pregnant with my family’s first post-war birth, whose name would be Mayer, my mother’s first cousin, named for Chana’s father. 

Unlike his sister, Zayde decided not to emigrate to Israel after the war and chose the United States instead. He felt as though he had already fought enough and knew life in Israel would require more fighting. My Zayde and Bubby arrived at Ellis Island on August 31, 1949 and settled in Newark, New Jersey. Bubby raised three children. Zayde worked in a window factory. He was a skilled craftsman. Good with his hands. He enjoyed watching boxing and professional wrestling. He made enough money for the family to afford a week at the shore over the summer, Bradley Beach in particular, that my mother remembers fondly. They owned their first piece of property over forty years later and my Zayde died within a few years of closing on the house in Leisure Village, a retirement community in Lakewood, New Jersey, of a brain aneurysm, in 1994 at the age of 76. 

My mom wonders if he would’ve opened up, had he lived longer. Some of the quieter survivors do. When my Zayde died, suddenly, our family was left with a real hole. Not only because the quiet, warm, strong man was gone but because our connection to his past and our ability to know ourselves through his experience was extinguished. My whole existence hangs on every decision my Zayde made in the years between 1942 and 1948: every break he caught, every guard he eluded, every hiding place he sought, every intervention that allowed him to see another dawn. I get to be whoever I am because he defied every odd. I carry that weight and that gift with me everywhere I go, like a piece of jewelry hanging on my chest that I clutch at for meaning.

Over the years, my mom amassed a micro-library of documentation that in bits and pieces answers the key research question: How are we alive today? She made many trips to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. She read books and conducted internet research. And four years ago, along with her sister Rita and her cousin Mayer, my mom traveled to Europe. Together with a group of multi-generational survivors, they toured concentration camps, visited my Zayde’s home village, and even stopped at the final camp from which he was liberated. In the past ten years, we’ve assembled details that have allowed us to map out my Zayde’s journey.

After his deportation from Sosnoweic, Chaim spent two years in Blechhammer, a labor sub-camp of Auschwitz between 1943 and 1945. His paperwork, which the Nazis so dutifully kept, listed his profession as schlosser or locksmith. In January 1945, prisoners were marched out of Blechhammer into the winter with a loaf of bread in-hand. 5,000 people left. 200 survived. One half of one percent of those survivors was my Zayde--or two one-thousandths of the original population of marching prisoners. After a brief stay in Gross-Rosen, Chaim was transferred to a sub-camp of Buchenwald called Langenstein-Zweiberg. 

The Nazis opened Langenstein-Zweiberg only in 1944 in an effort to hide munitions and aircraft factories in the side of the hills, in tunnels that Zayde was enslaved to dig. Life expectancy in this camp was six weeks. 25-30 prisoners died daily. As the Allies closed in by the spring of that year, the Nazis ushered most of the 6000 prisoners out of the camp on a death march. But Zayde remained, maybe in the infirmary or the barracks. Who knows? And how? Liberation occurred on April 11, 1945 - two days and thirty-five years before I would be born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Some of what we know about the conditions of the camp are from the accounts of soldiers of the 83rd infantry division of the US army, who landed at Normandy and fought through until the Nazi surrender. When the soldiers entered Langenstein, the prisoners presented them with an American flag made of burlap, in gratitude. That flag is in the collection at the Holocaust Museum in, DC.  

My first trip to the Museum was in the late-90s, as staff on a Jewish cross-country teen tour. Walking through the halls done up as cattle cars, black-and-white photographs of skeletons following me around the room. Among all the glances, I looked for him, scanning the walls for his likeness. Would I recognize him? All the eyes and all the collar bones made me dizzy. Physically dizzy. I don’t think it was a panic attack but a surge of trembling anxiety warmed over me. I couldn’t think straight. The room spun briefly. I held in tears because I was too young to know how to be emotional in public. I recaptured my breath and kept walking, past a five-foot-high pile of children’s shoes and a table full of recovered spectacles.

At liberation, Zayde weighed 30 kilos or about 66 pounds. Most of the prisoners still alive on that day died very soon thereafter, even under the medical care of the US army, as a result of the abuse they had suffered and the impact of diseases like dysentery, which were rampant. Following liberation, Chaim was taken in by a family in Goslar, a nearby town. In 1947, his name was on a letter to the people of Goslar, thanking them for their hospitality. 

We’ve learned that Zayde was one of only a few Jews among the 6000 prisoners in Langenstein-Zweiberg, an anomaly. The camp held men of 22 nationalities and was primarily for political prisoners. Pink triangle patches were also found on-site, identifying some of the prisoners as gay. How did Zayde find himself here of all places at the end of the war? Isn’t that a mystery?! 

My family doesn’t have heirlooms, aside from a set of silverware and the brown leather coat, which seems to fit me better these days. Our family line was interrupted eighty years ago as was any physical attachment to our past. Our cognitive attachment was fractured too, without a timeline to help us comprehend what we’d been through, what he’d been through. Fragmented memories are the only artifacts we have. They’re more complete now than they were a decade ago and I’m grateful for that, for they permit me toeholds to private understanding. 

These days, some memories fill me with paranoid curiosity. With the rise of belligerent white nationalism and violent anti-semitism in this country, I wonder, What would I do if my family was threatened? How long until the cattle cars come for me? Would I make it? Do I have that in me, whatever he had in him? If Kristallnacht marks the outbreak of Nazi violence against Jews, where are we today on that timeline? What a luxury it must be to live through this age without fear.

In most memories, though, my Zayde is smiling with big, bright eyes: scooping me up to carry me in his strong arms; standing at the beach with the sun on his body; at a meal, sitting at the head of the table, laughing, with a drink in his hand. What joy he must have known in the tactile sensation of holding a child, the warmth of summer, and the richness of family. 

I got drunk on the night of my dissertation defense. We were celebrating. Before leaving the house, we drank a bottle of French champagne an old friend gifted us for our wedding engagement. We walked down the street to Fruition, the finest restaurant in Denver, Colorado. We ate halibut cheeks, among other things. I cried. And when I say, “I cried,” I mean I dripped ugly tears on the pale pink tablecloth and wiped them from my face with white linen. 

In this moment of accomplishment and elation, I could only think about where my own family had been in such a short time. My zayde survived statistically certain death and here I am, in America, with a doctoral degree, drinking champagne and eating halibut cheeks. What did I do to deserve this?, I kept saying, sobbing.

My Zayde was given a name by his parents and reduced to a number by the Nazis, and so it is only fitting for me to reanimate his name with my own son’s birth four years ago. Chaim: the Hebrew word for “life.” We could never give an American boy the name, Chaim, of course. Americans don’t do the guttural “ch.” But we affixed Chaim to the front of my son’s name, as well as giving him a wiley American name--Wyatt--the name of a man who traversed a new frontier. 

When my son was six months old, he was diagnosed with a neurological condition that generates seizures in his brain. I said to myself, that since he has Zayde’s name, he has Zayde’s fortitude and his will to live and transcend whatever is placed before him. Today Wyatt is thriving, branded as he is with Zayde’s spirit.

That is Chaim’s tattoo after all: an indelible and unmistakable reminder of human and Jewish perseverance. Faded, battered, but full of life. 

Joel R. Pruce served as post-doctoral fellow in human rights studies and joined the faculty as an assistant professor in Fall 2014. He also leads the HRC's Moral Courage Project. Prior to arriving at UD, Dr. Pruce held the position of Lecturer in International Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies - University of Denver. Originally from New Jersey, Joel is settling in to life in Ohio along with his wife, Heather Atkinson, and their dog, Teddy Bear.

Human Rights and COVID-19 in Italy Today

Coverage of the human rights dimensions of Italy’s efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has mainly focused on the curtailment of the population’s freedom of movement and freedom to assemble. These steps to curtail individual rights have been made in the interest of protecting the public health of the country. According to demographers, Italy’s weaknesses are twofold: the country has the second-oldest population on the planet and there is a high degree of social mingling between older and younger generations. 

While many of the other countries fighting the pandemic may be vulnerable to “governmental overreach” that may violate human rights, the steps taken by Italy appear to meet obligations to human rights. The government has even launched a campaign Digital Solidarity to keep people connected and informed during the lockdown. However, while the majority of the population is in lockdown at home and obeying new regulations, there are gaps in meeting the needs of those on the margins. As with every country, there is concern for the vulnerable- prisoners, homeless, and asylum seekers. 

There was an outbreak of prison riots across Italy because inmates were concerned about the fast spread of coronavirus in overcrowded conditions and the suspension of family visits. Rights groups are calling for the shortening of sentences and the broader use of house arrest to relieve conditions in prisons.  

The homeless in Italy are facing a critical situation. Pope Francis has donated 100,000 Euros to Caritas, an organization that offers a number of essential services to the poor. Francesco Soddu, director of Caritas, said, “We have given support to homeless people who are unable to follow government directives on quarantine.” Another Italian NGO, Emergency is conducting inspections of shelters and reception centers to train staff on managing the health crisis for vulnerable populations.

Italy has been and continues to be the main entry point for migrants and refugees coming across the Mediterranean Sea. The reception for migrants and asylum seekers has been affected- there is mandatory quarantine for those arriving in the country that also extends to search and rescue vessels and integration services have been either suspended or drastically reduced. Limited legal services affect the processing of asylum seekers; appeal hearings and interviews have been suspended since courts are closed. Some political parties took the opportunity to float the idea of shutting borders, but the feared “weaponisation” of the COVID-19 pandemic has not come to pass, at least not yet. The adverse effects of these policies can be considered a violation of human rights; as the MSF Head of Mission for Search and Rescue declared, “Quarantining [a search and rescue ship] is equivalent to stopping an ambulance in the middle of an emergency. This is a discriminatory action.” 

So while trust in the government is high and the population is following instructions, it is important to make sure vulnerable populations are being seen and their needs addressed. Human rights groups in Italy have not dropped their vigilance but will have to work a bit harder to raise their concerns in a moment when society is looking inward, to the individual needs of family and friends. From the perspective of someone who studies human rights advocacy, I am hopeful that the active presence and concerted efforts of watchdog groups will be effective in building solidarity across people whose rights of movement and assembly have been curtailed, temporarily, with those on the margin whose rights are often violated. Ensuring that the government does not abrogate its responsibilities to everyone even in an emergency remains our collective responsibility.  

Dr. Alexandra C. Budabin is a Senior Researcher at the University of Dayton Human Rights Center. She is conducting research on transnational advocacy around gender-based sexual violence with Dr. Natalie F. Hudson. She is a Co-I on the research project "Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things", funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research 2017-2020. 

Refugees #NotWelcome? The Contentious Politics of Solidarity in Digital Spaces

In May 2019, I traveled to Florence to participate in a conference hosted by the Center on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) on the Contentious Politics of Solidarity. Hosted by Donatella della Porta and Elias Steinhilper. The conference was an occasion to discuss the ways in which recent migration flows in Europe since the summer of 2015 have promoted acts of solidarity in host countries. As time has passed, however, support for migrants has become challenged, as Professor della Porta described, to the extent that acts of solidarity have become criminalized, stigmatized, by mainstream media, political parties, and politicians. Scholarship must now turn to how solidarity initiatives have mobilized in response to repressive tactics. The conference brought together scholars of social movement and civil society to discuss how we might bridge disciplines to study the interactions among NGOs and social movements --voluntary action, advocacy, or protest--in moments of crisis.

With my collaborator Nina Hall of John Hopkins SAIS, I presented work in progress related to studying resistance to solidarity in digital spaces. In the last few years, we have seen how a number of humanitarian campaigns led by various authorities--state, UNHCR, and civil society—have attempted to foster solidarity between receiving countries and refugees. From Ireland to Italy, Sweden to Slovakia, new civil society, and volunteer, initiatives sprung up to assist refugees. In many countries, there was a strong sense of solidarity, and empathy, towards the thousands fleeing persecution from Middle East and North Africa. These acts of solidarity and rhetorical endorsements moved into digital space in the form of hashtags such as #WelcomeRefugee, #RefugeesWelcome, #Letthemstay, #WithRefugees.  

Yet, Nina and I found that the sentiment of fostering solidarity towards migrants and refugees was not shared by all. Some people felt concerned, and even threatened by the flows of migrants and asylum seekers into their countries. We found that a variety of arguments were being advanced in digital spaces through the circulation of hashtags such as #FuckRefugees, #FuckOffRefugees, #Rapefugees, #NotWelcomeRefugees, and #RefugeesNotWelcome. These hashtags circulated and appeared to be directly responding to the pro-solidarity hashtags discussed above. As one tweet in 2016 summed up, “Fuck refugees not #WithRefugees We don't need more scroungers, rapists and terrorists. We should look after our own poor! #fuckrefugees.”  

In light of ongoing discussions on how to curb hate speech, we focus on the social media debates around accepting migrants and refugees.  This is part of a body of work that studies the backlash against refugees both on-line and offline. In particular, as some research suggests that Facebook enables online hate speech to shift into real-life violent crime against refugees; the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand is a most recent example on this link. Our work lays bare the ways in which twitter is a critical space for solidarity contestation where anti-solidarity discourses often respond directly to pro-solidarity campaigns (by invoking the same hashtags). We see descriptions of the refugee situation (#refugees, #refugeecrisis, #Syrianrefugees) as well as mentions of the pro-refugee hashtags like #RefugeesWelcome and #WithRefugees alongside anti-refugee hashtags (#fuckrefugees and #RefugeesNotWelcome). Some policies are mentioned (#muslimban and #shiftingburden) that might be used by either camp. National contexts are reflected in references to particular politicians (Trudeau, Obama, @MayorofLondon, Trump) as well as their slogans (Trump’s #maga). A worrisome range of offensive speech is on display in addition to the anchoring hashtags: the #fuckrefugees hashtag is accompanied by additional uses of the #fuck connected to categories, politicians, opposition groups (Liberals), as well as other (liberal) movements like Black Lives Matter. Racially specific language like #NoKebabsallowed also makes an appearance here. White supremacy sentiments and organizations are invoked heavily. Groups like Red Nation Rising, a conservative affiliation in the US and European Brotherhood make an appearance along with injunctions to #Defendeurope. There are explicit references to Hail Odin, White Supremacy, White Europa, and White Colonies. These references reveal public attitudes that circulate, connected or disconnected from informal groups or political parties.

Following our presentation, the question of the ethical implications of our project was raised. Does our research give undue attention and significance to online hate speech in ways that may assist anti-solidarity forces? Citing her discussions with pro-solidarity activists, my collaborator Nina Hall discussed the limitations of studying only progressive pro-solidarity movements; indeed, understanding the anti-solidarity networks and online spaces of hate speech is critical for today’s advocates. Our work is concerned with the arguments made by anti-solidarity and anti-migrant forces to make legible their grievances, dominant narratives, along with the misinformation that feeds some of these arguments. We found that there were a wide-range of frames used--cultural, economic, gender, security, and legal—with some being more popularly adopted and diffused than others. We note that engagement with international refugee laws and policies is minimal while claims to specific national contexts and local concerns is dominant. It may be that pro and anti-refugee solidarity groups are talking past each other, not to each other. As another conference participant pointed out, our work will help pro-solidarity groups adjust their communication strategies to take into account what works and doesn’t work when communicating the needs of migrants and refugees. Future work will continue to explicate the nature of arguments against migrants and refugees, better trace the diffusion across the Northern American and European contexts, and offer tips to NGOs and advocates on responding to anti-solidarity sentiments. 

Photo credit: https://refugees-welcome.blogs.uni-hamburg.de/

Dr. Alexandra C. Budabin is a Senior Researcher at the University of Dayton Human Rights Center. She is conducting research on transnational advocacy around gender-based sexual violence with Dr. Natalie F. Hudson. She is a Co-I on the research project "Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things", funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research 2017-2020. 

The benefits that places like Dayton, Ohio, reap by welcoming immigrants

The Trump administration’s emphasis on immigration has often stoked partisan political battles. Those debates, as loud as they are, sometimes obscure the fact that immigrants are about 14% of the U.S. population.

Immigrants are adjusting and adapting to life throughout the country and most of them are legal residents or naturalized citizens. As we have explored through our research, this includes newcomers settling in the South, in rural areas and all over the heartland.

The successful incorporation of immigrants into U.S. communities is important not only for newcomers themselves, but for everyone – in terms of avoiding the social and political conflict that can accompany demographic changes.

As scholars studying how immigrants establish lives in these new destinations, our research casts light on national and local policies that support this process, and those that don’t help at all.

A New Destination

Consider what’s happening in Dayton, Ohio, a city that, like many Midwestern towns, has struggled with population loss in recent decades.

Immigrants began settling there in the 1990s, with most coming from Latin America and Asia. Many of these newcomers, who now account for about 5% of the city’s population, are refugees from places like Uzbekistan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The local government has embraced the immigrants and the demographic changes they bring through its Welcome Dayton initiative that we have been following as it unfolds. The municipal program, working with a staff of just three people, helps immigrants get jobs, learn to interact with community institutions, build trust with local police and get accustomed to life in a strange land. It even holds an annual soccer tournament for immigrants.

The initiative started with a small group of religious leaders, academics and government officials motivated by moral and humanitarian concerns to help immigrants successfully settle into Dayton.

But there are also practical reasons for cities like Dayton to encourage immigrants to stay, be part of the community and put down roots.

Shrinking No More

Across America’s so-called Rust Belt, where once buoyant industries have given way to widespread unemployment, populations are shrinking and economies are suffering. Dayton is an example: Its population sank from a peak of 262,300 in 1960 to 141,527 in 2010.

Census data from 2017 indicate that the number of local residents has become stable.

Many signs point to immigrants having made that happen, chief among them that the U.S.-born population has continued to decline. Between 2009 and 2013, it fell by 8.6%, about 13,000 people. During the decade leading up to 2016, the foreign-born population had roughly doubled to about 7,000, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of census data, making the city home to one of the nation’s fastest-growing immigrant communities.

The city’s economy is benefiting from the newcomers, who are more educated, on average, than its U.S.-born residents. Immigrants also tend to be more entrepreneurial than people who were born here, making them almost twice as likely to start their own business. According to research by Duke University economics professor Jacob L. Vigdor supported by a pro-immigration group, the arrival of immigrants has been a boon for manufacturing jobs and housing markets in many places like Dayton.

We’ve seen this with our own eyes as new businesses have popped up on streets that had only a row of empty storefronts 15 years ago.

The 4.8% share of Dayton residents born in other countries remains below the national average. But that still marks a big change from 2000, when only 3% of the people in Dayton were immigrants.

In our view, these new residents are making a positive difference as they pay taxes, join religious congregations, and become local leaders. In turn, this is reflected in the fact that most city residents say they would be supportive if an immigrant family moved in next door.

Research indicates that Dayton’s experience is pretty common. Cities that welcome immigrants and refugees tend to see benefits like economic growth and a stronger sense of civic pride as urban blight recedes.

Fear and Anxiety

Stricter immigration enforcement has changed things across Ohio, like the rest of the country.

In fact, one of the most striking preliminary results of our current survey of Dayton’s immigrant community, which we began in 2017, is their growing fear. Even newcomers who have legal status – which most in Dayton do – fear they could be attacked, detained or deported anyway.

These jitters can make it harder for immigrants to develop connections with their neighbors, as some avoid going out in public to forestall any trouble.

In part, these concerns arise from the increasing frequency of hateful speech and actions. Immigrants we interviewed described encounters with people who hurled racial slurs like “dead Muslim” or “terrorist” or being told to “go back home.” Their children have experienced bullying at school. Posters and pamphlets from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which plans to hold a rally in the city, are popping up more.

Other forms of backlash are more subtle, but also send a message of rejection that immigrants hear loud and clear.

Some of this rejection comes from suburbs around Dayton. For example, two state representatives from nearby suburban districts objected to a Dayton Public School Board motion – largely symbolic – that affirmed the district’s commitment to being a “safe and welcoming” place for all students regardless of immigration status, national origin, sexual orientation, race or religion.

In response, Welcome Dayton and other community institutions have taken steps to support the immigrant community in this time of increased division and politicization. There are new efforts around “know-your-rights” trainings, and a rapid response team to accompany immigrants to their legal hearings or care for children left behind after a parent is deported.

Interestingly, more people are volunteering to tutor immigrants in English, and engagement in similar initiatives has increased. As far as we can tell, Dayton as a whole continues to welcome the immigrants who are settling in the city.

Miranda Hallett and Theo Majka are Faculty Research Fellows at the Human Rights Center. 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Visitors get specialized immigration assistance at Welcome Dayton’s special events like this Women’s Day celebration in 2017. AP Photo/John Minchillo

The Rise of Caring Capitalism in the Humanitarian Space

As part of the International Studies Association Annual Convention 2019, I helped organize two panels on behalf of the Commodifying Compassion:Implications of turning people and humanitarian causes into marketable things (led by PI Lisa Ann Richey of Copenhagen Business School with funding from the Danish Council for Independent Research). These panels considered the deepening links between ethical consumption and everyday humanitarianism. For the panel chaired by Dr. Natalie Hudson, we invited scholars to offer gendered perspectives linking consumers as “helpers” and their beneficiaries. As the humanitarian space expands, it is important to examine how international agencies, non-governmental organizations, corporations, consumers, celebrities and well-meaning white women are all acting under the claims of popular feminism for gendered humanitarianism. Feminist theoretical perspectives engage with critical materialism, constructivism, ideological critique and pragmatism to critique the gendered and neoliberal politics of contemporary humanitarianism and transnational advocacy. Kaylan Schwarz of the University of Guelph explored how handmade objects reveal material cultures of aid; Kathryn Mathers of Duke University argued that the white savior industrial complex should be considered both penetrative and extractive - a masculine domination of both transactions and the discourses that shape relationships between benefactors and beneficiaries; and Richey shared work on a case of everyday humanitarianism: luxury made in prison products that promote the brand value of imprisoned women. Here I offer a closer look at two of the presentations.

Conceptions of refugee women were the focus of work by Annika Bergman Rosamond and Catia Gregoratti of Lund University in a presentation entitled “From Victims to Self-reliant Artisans: Neoliberal Feminist Turns in Global Humanitarian Governance.” By focusing on the diffusion of the neoliberal idea of “women as enterprising subjects, ” Bergman Rosamond and Gregoratti compared two actors working with the UNHCR: IKEA Foundation’s partnership with the Jordan River Foundation and Angelina Jolie’s involvement with RefuSHE project. Locating the analysis in postcolonial feminist approaches, Bergman Rosamond and Gregoratti found that both project “the monolithic image of the “refugee woman” who appears as one in need of saving through the market.” In the end, by promoting piece-rate artisanal handcraft work made by female entrepreneurs, “what is celebrated as empowerment is little more than the intensification of gendered and deeply precarious forms of labour.” In stressing the stakes, Bergman Rosamond and Gregoratti argue that not only do these modes of representation “hark back on neoliberal rationalities”, but they also share “(dangerous) affinities with right-wing populist ideas of helping refugees ‘at home’.”

Drawing from our project on transnational advocacy around gender-based sexual violence (SGBV) in conflict, Dr. Hudson and I presented on “Saving the Women of Congo: The Intersection of Neoliberal Helping and Gendered Security.” We explored how advocacy for SGBV survivors has found new strategies in the marketplace that narrate gendered ideas about benefactors, beneficiaries, and solutions. We applied a gender security lens to analyze the Northern and Southern contexts imagined in new modes of helping: walk/run-a-thons, coffee, and the purchase of lingerie.  These case studies on Run for Congo Women, Pour les Femmes, and Equal Exchange coffee showed that, for the most part, modes of “helping” women in Congo reinforce gender stereotypes, dehistorize violence in both North and South contexts, and valorize individualized and private solutions to conflict. However, some modes did move beyond superficial engagement, challenging our assumptions around the depolitizing effect of such cause-related marketing.  In coalescing a market for saving the women of Congo, we find that female consumers in Northern contexts are empowered as “everyday heroes” to take on matters of international security, making a difference in the life of a female survivor of conflict-related violence, and sometimes this initial and rather superficial intervention can transform into something more long-term and meaningful. Still, this “helping” draws heavily on tropes related to presumed feminine philanthropic impulses—enabling them to sponsor “sisters”, buy sleepwear, and connect to coffee farmers through their caffeine consumption.

Following the five presentations, our discussant Roxani Krystalli of Tufts University offered sharp reflections on the state of the field. She encouraged all of the presenters to consider why gendered narratives of helping persist, despite widespread recognition of their unsettling tropes. She urged us to be careful not to homogenize conceptions of the North, South, Africa, and international community; in doing so, we risk erasing salient audiences and the “fractured multivocality” that exists. A provocative question raised by Krystalli was “where are the men”? How does the absence of men in the narratives of caring capitalism tell a gendered story? Finally, we were encouraged to build intersectional analysis into our work to consider whose bodies are privileged (for saving, empowerment, political participation) in the humanitarian space. Overall, the panel provided provocative examples that confirmed the gendered nature of caring capitalism that revealed disturbing trends linking ethical consumption to the humanitarian space while also underscoring the need for careful study of the ethics of advocacy, resilience, and implications of neoliberal modes of helping.  Such research is critical to understanding the protection and promotion of women’s rights when the spheres of economic development and post-conflict reconstruction intersect in contemporary politics.

Dr. Alexandra C. Budabin is a Senior Researcher at the University of Dayton Human Rights Center. She is conducting research on transnational advocacy around gender-based sexual violence with Dr. Natalie F. Hudson. She is a Co-I on the research project "Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things", funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research 2017-2020. 

Indian bill to ‘protect’ trafficking victims will make sex workers less safe

Hoping to protect women from sexual exploitation, Indian lawmakers are pushing a bill that amends the criminal code to harden legal and financial penalties for sex trafficking.

The “Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill,” which passed the lower house of India’s parliament in July 2018 and may become law in 2019, seeks to make combat this lucrative, illicit trade.

Not everyone thinks harsh deterrence will work.

Days after it passed in the lower house of India’s Parliament in July, two United Nations experts said the bill leans too heavily on the criminal justice system. Without more of a “human-rights based and victim-centred approach,” the UN special rapporteurs on human trafficking and modern slavery warned, India “risks further harming already vulnerable individuals.”

India’s sex trade

According to the Indian government, 4,980 victims of sex trafficking were rescued in the country in 2016.

Sex workers in India oppose the bill that’s ostensibly meant to protect them, saying it inaccurately conflates human trafficking with consensual sex work.

In major Indian cities like Kolkata, Hyderabad and Sangli, sex workers are well organized and politically engaged. Yet no sex worker groups were consulted during the drafting of the legislation.

Community leaders argue that the anti-trafficking legislation promotes a dangerous idea that everyone in the sex trade is either a victim or a criminal.

“If this bill becomes law, the police will harass us even more,” said Kajol Bose, secretary of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, one of India’s largest sex worker organizations. “The number of raids will increase and the number of clients will decrease.”

I believe Indian lawmakers could improve their bill by looking to the strong systems already in place locally across India that prevent forced prostitution.

I conducted anthropological research with Kolkata’s Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, which has a membership of 65,000 people across the state of West Bengal.

The group is based in Sonagachi, Kolkata’s iconic red-light district, which is tucked behind a main artery in the northern part of the city. This bustling and congested labyrinth of narrow alleyways lined by houses, most of which operate as brothels, is home to some 10,000 sex workers. An estimated 20,000 male customers visit Sonagachi daily.

Most Sonagachi brothels are managed by female brothel owners, or “malkins,” who keep half of their employees’ payment.

Most of the women I met working in Sonagachi came from poor, rural villages in India, Bangladesh or Nepal.

Driven by increasing hunger and poverty in formerly agricultural regions, many arrived in Kolkata planning to enter the sex trade because they figured it was the best way to feed themselves and their families. Some can even afford to send money back to their families.

Keeping Kolkata’s red light district safe

Other women in Sonogachi were brought there by a friend or husband, and began doing sex work because they felt they had little choice.

This is the kind of exploitation that the sex worker’s union wants to prevent. So, in 1997, the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee founded the “self-regulatory board” to combat trafficking in Sonagachi.

Every morning, between at 10 a.m., peer educators and outreach workers visit area brothels. Since the board is comprised mainly of local sex workers, newcomers to Sonagachi are easily identified.

Women new to the scene are taken for medical evaluation to a local health center called the Abinaash Clinic. Durbar has run the clinic since it took over the government’s HIV/AIDS prevention program in 1997. The STD testing done there prevents the spread of disease in Sonagachi.

A bone ossification test, which gives an age range, helps identify minors. Underage sex workers are handed over to the Child Welfare Committee of Kolkata, a government agency.

Determining whether adult women newly arrived to Sonagachi have been trafficked requires a more extensive investigation. It can take days to get women to open up about how they arrived in Sonagachi and who brought them there.

Many of the women and girls approached by the Durbar are newcomers not just to sex work but to city living in general. They are usually confused by and even fearful of the group’s intervention. They seldom cooperate immediately.

It can take days of gentle questioning before the women start talking. During that process, newcomers to Sonagachi are housed at the nearby Short Stay Home, a residence run by the Durbar Committee.

Ultimately, those determined to have entered the sex trade willingly will be permitted to return to her brothel in Sonagachi. The women usually become members of Durbar and are given a photo ID card that confirms her status as a healthy and consensual sex worker – which usually helps them avoid arrest when police raids occur.

If the self-regulatory board concludes that a new entrant is being coerced into sex work by a trafficker, the authorities are contacted. The woman is usually placed in “shelters” – prison-like detention centers – while the government tries to get her back home.

Anti-trafficking bills hurt more than they help

In my assessment, the Sonagachi method is effective because it starts by recognizing that sex work is a job – one that must be done voluntarily, by consenting adults.

Based on that reality, it puts in place protections that keep trafficked women and children from abuse. The Durbar Committee works closely with local police, alerting them to the presence of minors and trafficked women.

Other red light districts in India, Thailand and beyond have sex worker unions use similar preventive measures to combat trafficking.

Several lawmakers I spoke with in Kolkata during my research dismissed the efforts of Durbar. They say trafficking is rampant in Sonagachi, and that the government must step in.

In my experience, most also see prostitution as a dangerous and immoral act – something that only victims of coercion would do. As a result, the Indian anti-trafficking bill they crafted outlaws the sex trade and punishes all who participate in it.

The proposed law, which includes social services for reintegrating trafficked women into society, may help some women. Organization like the Durbar Committee cannot identify and protect all victims of sexual exploitation in India.

Still, Indian lawmakers could learn something from the frontline community organizations already doing this work. Sex workers can be government partners in the fight against human trafficking – but only if they are not its targets.

Simanti Dasgupta, Associate Professor, University of Dayton and Faculty Research Fellow, University of Dayton Human Rights Center.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sex workers in Kolkata’s Sonagachi district wait for customers. AP Photo/Bikas Das

Celebrity, Protest, and South Africa in Copenhagen

Last week, I attended a conference on “Celebrity and Protest in Africa and in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle” at the University of Copenhagen. The conference was an opportunity to share research conducted as part of the European Council Research project “Apartheid—The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation, 1948-1990” led by Louise Bethlehem of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The project aimed to “trace the global diffusion of apartheid-era expressive culture, whether textual, musical or visual, in a Cold War setting”.  Panels showcased work on literary celebrities, music, and performance. Dr. Bethlehem delivered a keynote on “Stars in the Southern Hemisphere” that looked at the “global itinerary” of the exiled South African jazz singers Miriam Makeba Hugh Masekela as a means to challenge the neglect of Africa as an arena of agency.                                                                                                                    

The body of this work on the cultural resistance to apartheid looked at celebrities and their modes of protest. There was a fascinating presentation by Tal Zalmonovich on how prominent activists such as Anglican priest Trevor Huddleston consciously engaged in processes of celebrification to build their moral authority and exploit wider attention to support protests within South Africa. Presentations by Sonja Narunsky-Laden and Martha Evans looked at Nelson Mandela. Evans showed how his early activism during his show trials prior to imprisonment sowed the seeds of “the Mandela myth”, or his “Madiba magic”. Following his release from prison, Mandela’s performative capabilities, argued Narunsk7-Laden, engendered his ability to generate symbols, leading to his efforts to re-brand South Africa in the post-apartheid era.

As a young girl who sang South African freedom songs in choir and who later met (and hugged!) Nelson Mandela, I was especially excited for the panel on Protest: USA focus. The case of South-African anti-apartheid activism in the US has been a critical story in the canon of transnational protest. Danny Widener had his own childhood recollection of hearing Mandela speak in 1990 as part of his Freedom Tour. This led to Widener’s later work on the role of California, site of the largest university divestment campaign. Widener highlighted protests against celebrities who violated the South African Cultural Boycott as well as mass mobilization in the Black Community as a form of transnational solidarity. Myra Houser continued the conversation but from the perspective of what was happening in Washington, DC and how this was considered part of the US civil rights movement. She focused on the Southern African Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and anti-apartheid legislation, which often failed. She discussed the “Designer Arrests” of prominent individuals, including Rosa Parks, at the South African embassy protests, which continued for over two years, the largest act of civil obedience in US history. I was moved by Houser’s showcasing of letters written by YMCA children to President Botha, plaintive misspelled appeals written on loose-leaf paper that carried great emotional weight. Those of who were witness to and part of the anti-apartheid protest, in whatever small ways, feel as though we all played a part in what was a decades long struggle encompassing waves of global movements and political action to address oppression in South Africa.

While most of the presentations focused on South Africa, there was general discussion on the engagement of celebrities in social and political struggles. This is where my collaborator Lisa A. Richey and I came in, presenting work we’ve conducted as part of the Research Network on Celebrities in North-South Relations. I gave a presentation on “Building Solidarity through Coffee? Celebrity Humanitarians and Brand Aid Initiatives” that drew from our current book manuscript on Ben Affleck, Starbucks, and Eastern Congo. I argued that the trend around celebrity-led partnerships with causes and coffee companies offers limited possibilities for transnational solidarity with mixed outcomes for the field of peace and development. I compared Affleck’s efforts to those of George Clooney, who has marshalled his brand ambassadorship with Nespresso to encourage the country to investment millions of dollars in rebuilding Southern Sudan’s coffee sector. These alliances may bring new actors and funding to peace and development but they also reinforce approaches to politics that solidify Northern and elite power in ways that may or may not benefit the local recipients in Africa. Richey gave a second keynote on the “Neoliberal Politics of Celebrity Humanitarians.” She discussed how, when celebrities become involved in North–South relations, money is pledged, individual and institutional networks are mobilized, and attention is drawn toward particular crises, and deflected from others. Richey presented six tropes of celebrity engagement: aid celebrities, global mothers, strong men doing good, diplomats, entrepreneurs, and Afropolitans. She argued that celebrity humanitarianism offers a politics that is based on authenticity not accountability.

Taken together, the conference put in conversation scholarship on historic celebrity engagement and current celebrity interventions in ways that broadened and deepened our understanding of celebrity and its uses (and abuses) as a tool for protest. Important research is being conducted on how celebrity figures (and their fans) are able to promote meaningful social and political action as part of transnational struggles.   

Dr. Alexandra C. Budabin is a Senior Researcher at the University of Dayton Human Rights Center. She is conducting research on transnational advocacy around gender-based sexual violence with Dr. Natalie F. Hudson.