Scholars from across the world met Thursday at the Tempe campus to discuss immigration and its world impact as part of a two-day workshop.

Thursday’s discussion focused on transnational migration, while Friday’s focus will concentrate more on community response to immigration. The workshop, titled “Social Science Research on Immigration: The Role of Transnational Migration, Communities and Policy,” was funded by the National Science Foundation and hosted by ASU’s Justice and Social Inquiry Department.

“This is a very interdisciplinary project, so we had geographers, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists all talking about their work,” said Marjorie Zatz, director of Justice and Social Inquiry within ASU’s School of Social Transformation.

Zatz said she was excited to have the chance to share notes and compare research patterns with fellow scholars.

“Now we’re looking not at what’s known, but at what don’t we know yet,” she said.

One discussion panel described the sense of belonging between the first and second generations of immigrants in Southern California, which was presented by Leo Chavez from the anthropology department at the University of California, Irvine.

The second was a presentation by Belinda Herrera from the School of Social Transformation and Cecilia Menjivar from the School of Social and Family Dynamics at ASU. They discussed the process of becoming a citizen for undocumented Mexican immigrants who reside in the Phoenix area.

Elizabeth Chacko, from the geography and international affairs department at George Washington University, finished off the panel with her presentation on being Indian and American among second-generation Asian Indians. She described her topic as telling the story of “an American kid who is also an Indian kid.”

ASU professor Doris Marie Provine said she was pleased with the way the panel opened up the workshop.

“This panel [looked] at the American identity from various angles, which is a nice way to lead us in,” Provine said. “It’s a pretty broad conference.”

The wide coverage of immigration continued into the second panel with the topics of immigrants in Rotterdam, Netherlands, new African American immigrants and zones of containment.

Provine said the second day will focus more on immigration issues on the local level.

“One of the issues with the community is what role … law enforcement [will] play in creating the community,” she said.

Day two will include a presentation from Provine and ASU assistant political science professor Paul Lewis of the School of Political and Global Studies and professor Scott Decker of criminology and criminal justice.

“We’ve been doing this study about the steps to which local governments are getting involved or not getting involved in immigration enforcement,” Lewis said.

He said that since the 1880s, immigration has been under the control of the federal government, but there have been several federal laws passed over a decade ago that “invited” local enforcement to get involved.

“We are talking in this paper about how this creates a kind of patchwork of enforcement response,” Lewis said.

The other reports presented on the second day of the workshop will discuss Latino-immigrant day laborers in New Orleans and the effects of immigration and diversity on crime.

Zatz — the principal investigator — and several colleagues organized the event after they applied for a grant from the National Science Foundation.

“This [workshop] brings to light the diversity of immigration experiences,” Zatz said.

Reach the reporter at nathan.meacham@asu.edu.