July Symposium: “International Symposium on Confronting Ethno-Racial Discrimination in Agricultural Work: A France-US Research Collaboration”
By Cédric Gottfried, FJAR Lab Member
The Food Studies Program at The New School and the Food and Social Justice Action Research (FJAR) Lab hosted a week-long symposium from July 28th to August 1st on the issue of ethno-racial discrimination in agricultural work in France and the US. The symposium was co-organized with INRAE (the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment), and supported by the FACE Foundation, the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l ‘Homme, and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School.
The symposium was the continuation of a project that began in 2022 and is co-led by Food Studies Chair and FJAR Lab Director Dr. Kristin Reynolds. The project has brought together an interdisciplinary group of France-based and US-based scholars and independent journalists working on agricultural labor and racial and environmental justice. Goals are to identify social action and policy innovations to promote fairer working conditions for farmworkers in the current international political climate; and to communicate in both French and English about themes related to immigration, racialization, and labor conditions experienced by food and farm workers that bridge the US and France.
The July symposium provided a forum in which US-based and France-based scholars and PhD students could share their research and experience-based knowledge on ethno-racial discrimination in farm work. The symposium included two working meetings, a doctoral and early-career seminar in which PhD candidates and recent doctoral graduates from The New School and beyond presented their research, and a well-attended public event, “Agriculture, Food Workers, and Labor Justice: A Discussion on Recent Work in the Field” (see below for a recap). The project team is finalizing work on an article discussing the outcomes of the first stages of this collaboration and looking ahead to expanding the work. Keep an eye out for future updates!