Migrant Justice in Vermont and Beyond Fall 2025 Conference

Migration has never been a more timely issue in Vermont, the United States, and globally. People hailed as migrants have been rendered both hypervisible and at the same time, overlooked. They are featured as “masses” in press cycles and “criminals” in political talking points, but their individual experiences, stories, and perspectives are frequently obscured, essentialized, and stigmatized.  Building on the work, outreach, and partnerships cultivated through the Axinn Center for the Humanities’ “Migrant Justice in Vermont and Beyond” Mellon initiative, this one-day conference seeks to nuance the histories and present-day realities of migration, from the local to the regional and global scales. This conference asks, what circumstances have compelled people to migrate, historically and in the present? How can stories of migration help us conceptualize the intersections of (im)mobility with indigeneity, empire, racialization, displacement, the environment, gender, sexuality, the law, political economy, and culture? How might we complicate our own perceptions and received ideas about migration locally and globally? This conference is grounded in the belief that humanistic inquiry is foundational for conceptualizing migration with rigor, empathy, and curiosity, and that this necessarily entails the co-creation of knowledge beyond the academy. To that end, this conference features the experiences, praxes, and ideas of practitioners, artists, activists, and scholars alike, coming together to denaturalize conventional discourses about migration in the clear affirmation that our liberation is bound together, after Indigenous scholar, artist, and activist Lilla Watson.

“Migrant Justice in Vermont and Beyond” is a one-day conference taking place on Friday October 24, 2025 from 9am-6:30pm at McCardell Bicentennial Hall 216. Lunch and coffee break will be provided for all attendees. All Middlebury affiliates and Mellon-grant Community Partners are welcome, though seating is limited. This conference is part of the Axinn Center for the Humanities’ Mellon Foundation Public Humanities Initiative.

For more information, please visit our website: www.tinyurl.com/middmigration2025 or feel free to reach out by email: middmigration2025@middlebury.edu