2019 CODAPAR Grant Project
On the Shoulders of Activist Scholars: Building Healthy Environments for Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum-Seekers
Welcome to the 2019 APA CODAPAR--funded grant project page!
Focused on immigrant and refugee advocacy, our project has produced 3 webinars and 11 Oral History transcripts. The project included various sub-projects and related events-- please use the buttons below to find more information about the various aspects of our project.
For a more detailed summary of our grant project and its outcomes, please click on the "Final Report" button below
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Grant Project Brief Summary:
The 2019 CODAPAR interdivisional grant proposal was forged at the intersection
of a number of APA divisions (24, 5, 9, 27, 32, 37, 39, 45, 48, 52, and 56), following a long, strong and often buried legacy of social scientists who have collaborated with community members and social movements, to generate evidence to advance the common good. This project proposal stands on the shoulders of these activist scholars, including W.E.B. DuBois, Jane Addams, Marie Jahoda, Kenneth Clark and Ignacio Martin-Baro, to address the current crisis erupting at our borders and across United States.
A theoretical analysis shows that contempt for immigrants, refugees, or asylum seekers is explicitly or implicitly fueled by a concept of the subhuman, a term that was used in fascist Germany to justify the mistreatment of minorities and enemies. The dehumanization of millions of migrants has led to a humanitarian crisis at the border and across the United States. This project, coordinated with lawyers who have access to detention facilities and advocates across the country, as well as psychologists in El Salvador and Guatemala, seeks to reframe the discourse on policies and practices in immigration through oral histories. We believe our oral histories will promote collaborative research in detention facility assessment through a better understanding of the lived experience and community needs of detained persons, including post-detention. Our grant project offers policy suggestions and commentary on facility practices that lead to exclusion and discrimination.
In 1984, Carolyn Payton published a significant article in the American Psychologist, entitled “Who Must Do the Hard Things?” With this project, we answer this call. We seek to honor and join the legacy of social scientists who have long collaborated with everyday people gathering data on how they have been discriminated against, imprisoned and aggressively policed, with the goals of informing policy, organizing communities, circulating counter-narratives, educating those of us who enjoy the stability of “citizenship, ” and rebuilding active, diverse and democratic communities across borders. This CODAPAR proposal stands on strong shoulders, speaking with a sense of response-ability to the current humanitarian crisis faced by immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
To learn more about the 2020 CODAPAR Grant Project, please follow the link below.