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till in the formative stage, the Immigrant Integration Lab is already making strides. A first research fellowship has been awarded to a student developing a humanitarian assistance plan for basic human needs of asylum seekers being released from detention centers. The IIL is connecting to initiatives at the White House where integration has been added to the President’s proposed immigration reform bill; the Department of Homeland Security; the National Partnership for New Americans, a 12-state coalition of immigrant advocacy organizations; and European research centers like the Migration Policy Group (MPG). It is also seeking to assist the US Conference of Mayors and the National Governors Association with their immigrant integration agendas. At the September 2012 National Immigrant Integration Conference in Baltimore, Egmont explored how to improve awareness among colleagues of each other’s research. “By organizing disparate scholars for information sharing, agenda development, and dissemination of research findings, the lab is identifying and leveraging key partner relationships,” Egmont says. He also moderated a workshop on the usefulness of academic research to immigrant leadership, who often feel they are treated “like mice in a lab—people are talking at them, not with them,” Egmont says. “We have to build partnerships if we want to do responsible community-based research.” Closer to home, there are 180 agencies that have potential relationships with the GSSW within an hour’s drive of the school, and the Immigrant Integration Lab sees collaborative opportunity with them. In December 2012 a colloquium was held at BC to open a dialogue “to inspire and inform the community of what’s going on at the school and to listen effectively so the school can be responsive to the community’s needs,” Egmont says. Demetri Papademetriou, head of the leading Washington, DC, think tank, Migration Policy Institute, discussed the inevitable escalation of global humancapital migration along with global ideas, capital, and goods. Among initiatives on the table at the IIL are adding field education sites for GSSW students; strengthening the curriculum so more students, regardless of their social work specialty, are sen-
sitized in the classroom to immigrant issues; and providing continuing education opportunities for agencies’ bicultural staff, directors, and providers. Some of these people may be in the job because they have language capacity or other skills but may not have formal social work education. “With hundreds of social work programs in the US, pioneering efforts can have a multiplied impact on a generation of professionals in service,” Egmont explains, “especially with the phenomenon of the high percentage of care givers who are themselves immigrants.” Such ideas resonate with Marjean Perhot, director of refugee and immigration services at Catholic Charities in Boston. Most of her employees are not social workers; they have been hired for other abilities required for immigrant resettlement. “Right now,” Perhot says, “many people in resettlement agencies like ours are paraprofessional social workers, so they don’t have the skills that social work graduates have. New skill sets will make us both better partners.” Not only that, she continues, when her clients move out from under the umbrella of Catholic Charities and are dealing with the myriad challenges of daily life, they need to be met by social workers at every turn who know how to deal with newcomer populations. “If social workers can blend cultural competency with the work they are already doing, it will make for a more robust delivery to these populations,” Perhot says. At its best, education is responsive to a community’s pulse, and today the pulse of the community is throbbing with new blood, increased nationality, languages, and racial diversity, says Egmont. “We are either isolated or we are players. And if we are players, we are connecting ourselves to the leadership that recognizes the opportunity to work in partnership with the university. That is so that students are welcomed in where they can get leadership and training and internships, where courses are designed to actually prepare people to work in those environments, where the research is in response to the questions the community is asking, and where there’s an opportunity to use knowledge for the advancement of human kind.” *
boston college | graduate school of social work 21