Back Prelim. Prog. Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Archives
Exodus and Exile
An International Symposium

Image Map


Human migration, voluntary and coerced, ranks among the most volatile issues confronting the world. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, more than four million people have lost their lives in violent conflicts. This, compounded by natural disasters and weak state structures, has resulted in an estimated 17 million refugees and 27 million internally displaced people -- leaving one person out of every 120 uprooted. This Symposium examined the forces -- political upheaval, armed conflict, racial and religious persecution, redrawn borders, forced resettlement, starvation, poverty, environmental degradation, and xenophobia -- that create and contribute to these massive flows.

We probed contemporary controversies -- ethnic cleansing of Hutus and Bosnians, environmental refugees of China's Three Gorges Dam, nationalism and ethnic identity in the Russian Federation, and the reassessment of guestworker, immigration and asylum attitudes in France, the Middle East, the U.S. and elsewhere. Our inquiry included such issues as the nature of U.S. citizenship; border control; humanitarian relief; intervention and the limits of sovereignty; resettlement and repatriation strategies; psychological and sociological trauma of forced migration; and the tensions of multiple cultural identities and loyalties.

Finally, we were pleased to award this year's Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award to Dr. Francis Deng. Dr. Deng is the Special Representative for the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, and the Former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Sudan.

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMS

Tuesday, October 14

Tuesday, November 4

Monday, November 17

Thursday, December 4

SYMPOSIUM

Thursday, February 26

Friday, February 27

Saturday, February 28

Sunday, March 1

"The tour d'horizon of major issues and questions concerning international migration and refugees provided conferees and their audiences with an intense and in-depth education like none other."

-- Conference Reports, "An Educational Tour de Force at Tufts", International Migration Review, 32:4 (1998), pp. 1066-1068. Click here for FULL TEXT.

Dr. Mark Miller
Editor, International Migration Review
Professor of Political Science, University of Delaware.

Back | Preliminary Programs | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Archives