Second Colloquium

This past Wednesday we had the second colloquium involving research presentations from Dawn and Oluwakemi. Below are the abstracts of their presentations. Hopefully we can get some conversation going about their work. Feel free to post comments or questions for the presenters (whether you attended or not).

Dawn L. Williams (School of Education)
“Race-Based Reform: From Segregated Oppression to Integrated Oppression”

Abstract:
This literature review calls into question the success of the Civil Rights movement, which is associated with the integration of Black people into a white dominated society. This research shows that reforms made during this period have had disparate effects on the education and the economy of Black people. Furthermore, through a socio-historical lens this research challenges other theorists who downplay the U.S. government’s key role in the Black-white student achievement gap.


Oluwakemi M. Balogun (Department of Sociology)
“Extended Identities: Transnational Social Fields and Second-Generation Nigerian Immigrant Identity”

Abstract:
I theorize about assimilatory and transnational frameworks as simultaneous processes in the identity formation of second-generation immigrants. Rather than posing transnationalism and assimilation as diametrically opposed, I adopt a more expansive transnational social fields approach that allows for an understanding of the social connections that link the second-generation to both their parents’ homeland and country of settlement. Through interviews with Nigerian second-generation immigrants, I explore the ways in which identities and transnational social fields mutually constitute one another, arguing that identities are mediated through variable levels of insertion and active participation within transnational social fields.