Workshops and Conferences

Workshop on Physical Security and Protection of Refugee Populated Areas, October 1999

Conference on Demography and Security, December 1998

Workshop on the Migration of Scientists and Engineers to the USA, May 1997

Conference: The Politics of Counting: Race, Ethnicity, and Censuses in Modern Politics, November 1996

International Experiences in Migration Policies, 1995

Japanese and US Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Policies, 1995

German and American Migration and Refugee Policies

Workshop on Physical Security and Protection of Refugee Populated Areas

A Workshop on Physical Security and Protection of Refugee Populated Areas (RPAs), organized by Karen Jacobsen, was held at MIT in October 1999. Co-sponsored by the Mellon-MIT Inter-University Program on NGOs and Forced Migration, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Georgetown Institute for the Study of International Migration, the Workshop brought together invited representatives of NGOs, international organizations, U.S. Government agencies, and academics to consider the physical security and protection problems affecting refugees, relief workers, and others living and working in refugee populated areas. The workshop addressed two themes: (1) What is known and not known about RPA security and physical protection problems, including the types and extent of threats and historical and geographical variations; and (2) The development of a political framework for analyzing issues of security in RPAs. Workshop documents, including a briefing paper and case studies, as well as proceedings, were published in a special issue of Refugee Survey Quarterly, Volume 19, No. 1, 2000.

Conference on Demography and Security

A Conference on Demography and Security, organized by the late Myron Weiner and funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, was held in December 1998. The Conference examined the political consequences of demographic changes and the security implications of state policies to change demographic variables. Ten commissioned studies addressed the impact of population change on international migration, government population relocation policies, government policies to remove minorities, policies to control entry through military force, and policies of migrant sending countries to maintain the identity and political engagement of their diasporas through the creation of dual nationality and dual citizenship. In 2001, Berghahn Books published the Conference papers in Demography and National Security, edited by Myron Weiner and Sharon Stanton Russell, and a related volume analyzing the political effects of recent population changes, Political Demography, Demographic Engineering, co-authored by Myron Weiner and Michael S. Teitelbaum.

Workshop on the Migration of Scientists and Engineers to the USA

A workshop on the migration of scientists and engineers to the USA, sponsored by the Institute for Economic Development at Boston University and the Inter University Committee, was held in May 1997. The workshop, directed by Robert Lucas of Boston University and funded by the Sloan Foundation, aimed to (1) summarize the current state of information on the migration of scientists and engineers generated through the Sloan Research Awards and other research; and (2) identify the major gaps in our knowledge and consider potential research strategies to address these problems. Topics included: university policies toward foreign students, migration of foreign trained engineers and scientists to the US, the labor market impact, and the impact on productivity and competitiveness. The workshop report is available in PDF format here.

The Politics of Counting: Race, Ethnicity, and Censuses in Modern Politics 

A conference entitled, "The Politics of Counting: Race, Ethnicity, and Censuses in Modern Politics," funded by the Sloan Foundation, was held in November 1996. The conference, directed by Melissa Nobles of MIT's Department of Political Science, brought together political scientists, philosophers, statisticians, historians, legal scholars, public policy scholars, sociologists, and officials from the U.S. and Canadian Census Bureaus to examine controversies over the census in the US, Brazil, Canada, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.

International Experiences in Migration Policies

A 1995 workshop at MIT for the Center for Development and Enterprise (CDE) of South Africa on international experiences in migration policies. Studies were prepared by Mark Miller, Philip Martin, Gary Freeman, Robert Lucas, Astri Suhrke, and Aristide Zolberg. They were published in 1999 by Pinter Press under the title, Migration and Refugee Policies: An Overview, edited by Ann Bernstein and Myron Weiner. A summary of the findings and their lessons for South Africa was published in 1997 by CDE in two reports, "People on the Move: Lessons from International Migration Policies" and "People on the Move: A New Approach to Cross Border Migration in South Africa."

Japanese and US Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Policies

A joint project in 1995 between the Inter University Committee and the Japan Institute of Labor on Japanese and US immigration, refugee, and citizenship policies, under a grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. The project brought together economists, demographers, sociologists, and political scientists for workshops at MIT and at the Japan Institute of Labor in Tokyo. The papers from the project were published in 1998 by Macmillan (London) and NYU Press (New York) under the title, Temporary Workers or Future Citizens?: Japanese and U.S. Migration Policies, edited by Myron Weiner and Tadashi Hanami.

German and American Migration and Refugee Policies

A Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on German and American Migration and Refugee Policies, funded by the German American Academic Council. Myron Weiner served as project director and Rosemarie Rogers (Fletcher School), Nathan Glazer (Harvard), Reed Ueda (Tufts) and Barry Posen (MIT) prepared studies for the project. The policy recommendations were published by the American Academy and the studies prepared for the project were published in five volumes in 1998 by Berghahn Books in the series Migration and Refugees: Politics and Policies in the United States and Germany, with Myron Weiner as general editor. The titles of the individual volumes are: Migration Past, Migration Future; Migrants, Refugees, and Foreign Policy; Immigration Admissions; Immigration Controls; and Paths to Inclusion.