The Department of Public Policy and Administration will sponsor the annual Dr. Robert Bailey Memorial Lecture on Monday, February 6th, with special guest speaker Dr. Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York and at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.  Dr. Milkman will speak about “Immigration and Labor Market Precarity in the 21st Century US.”  

There are 25 million immigrant workers in the U.S. workforce, making up 16.5 percent of all workers. About a third are undocumented migrants from Mexico, Central America, Asia and Africa, employed in low-wage, precarious jobs at the bottom of the labor market, and vulnerable to wage theft  and other violations of labor and employment law. The situation of low-wage immigrant workers is inextricably entwined with rising inequality and the increasing precarity of the nation’s workforce as a whole, which in turn  is tied to the broader transformation of the U.S. political economy over the past four decades.  This lecture will profile the low-wage immigrant workforce, especially the undocumented, including their recent history of organizing and advocacy.  

The event will begin with a reception at 5:30 p.m., followed immediately by the lecture, which will be from 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.  Both events will take place in the Campus Center’s Multi-Purpose Room.  All are welcome, though registration is required.