Join the United Nations Association of Dane County and IRIS NRC for a lecture with Dr. Katherine Jensen of the Department of Sociology at UW-Madison. Participants will have the opportunity to hear from Dr. Jensen on her new book, The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil.
The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil
Brazil has been lauded by the UN as a global vanguard in refugee protection. Jensen will offer an up-close examination of how asylum works in that country, based on years of research with asylum officers, NGO workers, and asylum seekers from over 45 countries. Centering Syrian and Congolese refugees, she details how their experiences obtaining asylum differ, with vital consequences for how they feel about Brazil and their place in it. This talk offers insights in the global refugee landscape, the everyday workings of asylum policies, and the racial ramifications of refugee inclusion.
Katherine Jensen is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her PhD in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, with a Doctoral Portfolio in African and African Diaspora Studies. Before joining the University of Wisconsin, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Inter-American Policy & Research at Tulane University. She is a former Fulbright Fellow and P.E.O. Scholar. As an ethnographer, her research interests include race/racism, refugees and immigration, political sociology, and forced migration in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil and the Southern Cone. Her work has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Qualitative Sociology, American Behavioral Scientist, Social Currents, City & Community, and Contexts, as well as in edited volumes with university presses. Her first book “The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil” was published in 2023 at the University of Chicago Press.
This event will be held virtually on November 14th at 7PM. You can join via zoom by clicking here. We will be raffling free copies of Jensen’s book during the event!
