Aviva Chomsky is Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies, Salem State University. She will discuss the problem of undocumentedness from a humanitarian, historical, legal, and political economy perspective. Why has illegality become such a hot-button issue in the twenty-first century, and how can we understand current debates from a historically critical perspective.

Professor Chomsky’s academic interests include the Cuban Revolution, the coal industry in Colombia, and, recently, immigration in the US. Her work for the United Farm Workers in the 1970s led her to study the history of labor movements, immigration and migrant workers, and how people organize for social change.

Chomsky’s most recent publication is Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal. This book is an examination of what “illegal” and “undocumented” have come to mean with respect to immigrants.

Given Chomsky’s field of expertise, it’s not surprising that Undocumented takes the historical perspective on the issue. Beginning in the time of the European colonial empires, Chomsky looks the various means used to suppress the non-white and non-Christian peoples, and how Europeans came to dominate them. Initially, the primary distinction was one of religion; Europeans viewed Christianity as superior to all others, and justified their economic exploitation on this basis. By the 19th century, race had become the organizing principle behind laws that discriminated against indigenous people and justified the institution of slavery. In the 20th century, overt racism was no longer tolerated, and the notion of citizenship in a nation-state came to serve as the determining factor of one’s status in society.