One of the Center's primary goals is to enhance the quality and breadth of basic and applied research pertaining to issues of migration, ethnicity and citizenship in the United States and abroad. Particular emphasis is placed on encouraging cross-disciplinary interaction -- for example, fostering collaboration among, on the one hand, population and migration experts and, on the other, specialists in ethnicity, nationalism and international affairs. Substantively, the Center's research activities are focused in the following areas: i) causes and consequences of international migrations and refugee flows, and appropriate policy responses; ii) issues of incorporation and citizenship in major receiving countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and the nations of western Europe; and, iii) the impact of immigration on New York and other major U.S. cities.
 
 

ICMEC recently announced the publication of “Sharing Integration Experiences: Innovative Community Practices on Two Continents”, edited by Aristide Zolberg and Allison Clarkin. This volume, funded by a generous grant from the German Marshall Fund, is the culmination of a collaborative project designed to foster transatlantic dialogue on local immigrant integration policies and practices in Europe and the U.S. This volume is currently being translated into French and German and should be available for download in these languages by the end of May 2004.

New York City Seminars
Since the fall of 1993 the Center has hosted a series of New York City seminars intended to provide a forum for informed discussion and debate among academics, policy experts and journalists. These seminars bring together university-based scholars and journalists from New York City and the surrounding area with representatives of labor unions, immigrants' rights advocacy groups, human rights organizations, policy research institutes, and public and international agencies. Past seminar sessions have focused on immigration legislation in Congress, and the Clinton Administration’s policies and initiatives in this sphere.

Washington D.C. Seminars
In order to strengthen ties to national policy-makers and opinion-leaders, the Center has hosted occasional seminars in Washington, D.C. These seminars have been organized by Warren Zimmermann, former U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia and chair of the ICMEC’s advisory council. Participants have included senior officials from the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, the U.S. Department of State (Bureau for Population, Migration and Refugees), Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, as well as policy experts from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Urban Institute, the NAACP, and other institutions. Topics addressed have included the future of U.S. immigration and refugee policy, and refugee repatriation issues in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere.

Refugee Forum
The ICMEC also helped launch a new high-level Refugee Forum in New York City in partnership with the Open Society Institute’s Forced Migration Project, the International Rescue Committee, and Human Rights Watch. The Refugee Forum brings together selected scholar-researchers, refugee and human rights advocates, public officials and others to reflect critically on contemporary issues relating to refugees and internally-displaced persons, and international strategies to address the needs of these and other vulnerable] groups.
 
 

An important part of the Center's mission is to foster curricular innovations and improve graduate education on issues pertaining to migration, ethnicity and citizenship in the U.S. and abroad.

New York Consortium
The Center has taken the lead in establishing an inter-university Graduate Consortium on Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship. This consortium provides a forum for faculty and graduate students at five Ph.D.-granting institutions in the New York metropolitan area -- the City University of New York, Columbia University, Fordham University, New York University, and the New School -- to meet to discuss different disciplinary and methodological approaches to the study of issues of common concern, and to share work in progress with interested colleagues. The New York Consortium sponsored a curriculum development project, funded by The Ford Foundation, that resulted in new graduate-level courses.
 
 

The ICMEC organizes occasional conferences and symposia focusing on contemporary policy issues relating to migration, ethnicity and citizenship in the United States and abroad. These conferences are intended to provide an opportunity for participants in Center-sponsored research projects to share the results of their research findings and policy recommendations with a broad cross-section of academics, public officials, NGO representatives, and journalists from the United States and overseas. The "Events" section of this site contains information about upcoming conferences.
 
 

ICMEC publications include an occasional paper series; and major edited volumes, growing out of research projects.