Stanford University

Migration and Citizenship

SPICE Webinar: “Visualizing the Essential: Mexicans in the U.S. Agricultural Workforce”

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Webinar recording: https://youtu.be/FLKbADCk1o8

 

During multiple periods of economic crises, the U.S. economy has depended on Mexican labor. From World War II to the present, agricultural workers have been deemed essential to harvest our fruits and vegetables across the United States.

The Bracero Program began during World War II during a massive labor shortage due to the war and internment of Japanese Americans. It was the largest guest worker program agreement in United States history. Over 4.5 million contracts were awarded to young male Mexican immigrants from 1942 to 1964 to work in the railroad and agriculture industries.

Moreover, during the current health pandemic, agricultural workers have been categorized as “essential workers” by the federal government. Yet, many workers lack legal status to work in the United States.

Dr. Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez has conducted extensive research and oral histories with former Braceros. In this seminar, he will discuss significant topics in Mexican American history, including the history of the Bracero Program, agricultural history in California, and the current H2-A Guest Worker Program. The webinar will broaden educators’ understanding of Mexican and Mexican American history and help to prepare them to provide instruction that is culturally inclusive.

This webinar is a joint collaboration between the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University and SPICE.

 

Featured Speaker:

ignacio ornelas rodriguez

Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, Ph.D.

Ornelas is a historian, and currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His work and research focuses on California history, and in particular, Chicano history and Chicano/Latino studies and Latino politics. Much of his work has focused on archival research that documents Mexican and Mexican American history. The history of Mexican labor in the United States necessarily includes the study of civil and voting rights and the generations of Mexicans who advocated for those rights. Ornelas is currently rewriting for publication his dissertation, titled The Struggle for Social Justice in the Monterey Bay Area 1930-2000: The Transformation of Mexican and Mexican American Political Activism. Dr. Ornelas Rodriguez currently serves on the board of directors of the California Institute for Rural Studies. His areas of expertise include U.S. and California History, Political Science, and Latino Politics.

 

Via Zoom Webinar. Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/yc7j6qdd.

Dr. Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez Stanford University
Workshops

Kasumi Yamashita

616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, E005
Stanford, CA 94305-6060

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kasumi_yamashita.jpeg AM

Kasumi Yamashita is an Instructor for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), currently teaching an online course for high school students in Oita Prefecture, Japan, called Stanford e-Oita. Kasumi’s academic interests are in cultural anthropology, international education, and language technologies, and her research focuses on the Japanese diaspora in the United States and Latin America. While conducting fieldwork for her PhD in Anthropology at Harvard University, she spent a year at the University of São Paulo, as a Fulbright Scholar. She explored narrations of memory and migration, and community involvement in the emergence of Japanese diaspora museums throughout Brazil, including the Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa no Brasil (Historical Museum of Japanese Immigration to Brazil). Kasumi researched Nikkei Latin American communities in Japan while at Hitotsubashi University on a Japanese government scholarship. She earned an AM in Regional Studies–East Asia from Harvard University. 

Kasumi received a BS in Studio Art from New York University. She was a University Scholar and spent her junior year in Spain at the Instituto Internacional in Madrid. After graduating from NYU, she taught English as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) and later worked as a Coordinator for International Relations (CIR) on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. As a CIR at Yukuhashi City Hall, Fukuoka Prefecture, she founded a Japan–U.S. student and teacher exchange program between middle schools in Yukuhashi City and the Grace Church School in New York. More than 500 students and teachers from the United States and Japan have participated in the program since she launched it in 1994. That year, she published a book of essays chronicling her experiences as a Japanese American woman in a small Japanese town, Kasumi no Yukuhashi Nikki (Kaichosha Press).

In New York, she served as a member of the local staff of the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations under the leadership of Ambassador Hisashi Owada. She also served on the Executive Committee of the Convención Panamericana Nikkei (COPANI XI) in New York and has been involved in past conferences across the Americas, most recently COPANI XX in San Francisco (CA) in 2019.

Kasumi also teaches and develops web-based curricula for the Translation and Interpretation Program at Bellevue College (WA). Kasumi frequently interprets for Japanese delegations in various fields (including education, technology, international relations, film, art, and museums) and serves on the Board of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCCW).

 

Instructor, Stanford e-Oita
Instructor, Stanford e-Fukuoka
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