Migration Conversations

Meet immigration and refugee lawyer, Debbie Rachlis. We talk about the Gaza Special Measures Program, why nobody has been able to come through that program, and what it tells us about IRCC's ad hoc approaches to humanitarian crises.

Meet Douglas Chong, director of the Hawai'i Chinese History Centre. We talk about the long historical presence of Chinese in Hawai'i, how personal and community archives are essential to counter narratives produced by Western sources, and why it is important to remember the past.

Meet Esther Yoo, Director of the Refugee and Immigration Law Clinic at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai'i. We talk about how immigration and refugee law clients and issues are unique in Hawai'i and the kind of representation and challenges her clinic and students address. They provide services to unaccompanied children, migrant workers and asylum seekers through mobile clinics. We also talk about the tensions that migrants working in farms and tourist spots like hotels, owned by corporations in continental US, represent vis-a-vis Native Hawaiian and local claims of dispossession and imperialism.

Meet Dr. Nandita Sharma, author of Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants. Her provocative book interrogates the nation-state system and the anti-colonial and post-colonial aspiration to seek nationalized sovereignty through a terr=itorialized form - that sovereignty as territorial rule is the pinnacle of liberation for some communities. In this conversation, I ask Dr. Sharma some tough questions and she provides an articulate invitation to think about things differently as we discuss how we move towards a decolonized and more equitable world.

Meet Dr. Kyle Kajihiro who teaches at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in Ethnic Studies and Geography and Environment. His research focuses on U.S. imperial formations, militarization, and Indigenous and decolonial social movements in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific region. He is also a founding member of Hawai'i Peace and Justice, an organization working to promote peace and social justice in Hawai'i through community organizing, popular education, art and nonviolent direct action. In this episode, we talk about the Detour project an educational tour project which give visitors insights into the realities of militarization and tourism . If you have been or plan on traveling to Hawai'i, this is a must listen to episode - a kind of audio guide alternative to the info you might receive otherwise.

Meet Dr. Kyle Kajihiro who teaches at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in Ethnic Studies and Geography and Environment. His research focuses on U.S. imperial formations, militarization, and Indigenous and decolonial social movements in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific region. He is also a founding member of Hawai'i Peace and Justice, an organization working to promote peace and social justice in Hawai'i through community organizing, popular education, art and nonviolent direct action. In this episode, we talk about the Detour project an educational tour project which give visitors insights into the realities of militarization and tourism . If you have been or plan on traveling to Hawai'i, this is a must listen to episode - a kind of audio guide alternative to the info you might receive otherwise.

In the 4th episode of the Hawai'i series of the Migration Conversations Podcast, I speak with Dr. John Rosa, and associate professor of history at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Dr. Rosa’s research focuses on the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Hawai’i and the histories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. He is the author of the acclaimed book Local Story: The Massie/Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History - a riveting book on the legal proceedings surrounding a white woman who accused five racialized men of rape in the 1930s and the murder of Joseph Kahahawai.

In the third instalment of Migration Conversations' Hawai'i Series, I speak with Dr. Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, a professor in political science at the College of Social Sciences, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. His research focuses on the mobilization of rights discourses in various contexts. We discuss his new book Law by Night, nocturnal legal theory and how law is both present and absent from this temporal space. In our discussion he raises questions about the right to sleep, the freedom to organize and assert agency at night, and how night has shaped the politics of race, vigilantism, gun ownership and white feminist actions like Take Back the Night.

Welcome to the second episode of a special series of Migration Conversations in Hawai'i. In this episode I am in conversation with Reece Jones, a professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in the department of geography and environment. The author of four books in this episode, we talk about his book titled White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall. Check out his latest book: Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States.

Welcome to the first episode of a special series of Migration Conversations in Hawai'i. In this episode I am in conversation with Noelani Goodyear-Ka’ōpua in an outdoor park with light rain tickling us. Born to young activists and UH graduates, Noelani grew up around Hawai’I communities and movements organizing around evictions, environmental degradation and economic injustice. Now a professor in political science at the College of Social Sciences, University of Hawai’I at Manoā, her work focuses on documenting, theorizing and practising Hawaiian sovereignty movement and invests her time and energy into education and the ‘āina, nurturing critical thinkers and doers. Her book Nā Wāhine Koa: Hawaiian Women for Sovereignty and Demilitarization is a collaboration with four activist elders who helped catalyze Hawaiian movements of the late 20th century.