Weatherhead Migration Cluster Seminar: “Majority Minority: The Pursuit of a Diverse Democracy”

Date: Wednesday, April 19, 2023, 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Location: CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Room S050
Speaker: Justin Gest, Associate Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

This event will take in place in-person only. Registration is not required. Transportation is available via the M2 shuttle departing from Vanderbilt Hall to Lamont Library.

Details: How do societies respond to great demographic change? This question lingers over the contemporary politics of many countries where persistent immigration has altered populations and may soon produce a majority minority milestone, where the original ethnic or religious majority loses its numerical advantage to one or more foreign-origin minority groups. Until now, most of our knowledge about large-scale responses to demographic change has been based on studies of individual people’s reactions, which tend to be instinctively defensive and intolerant. We know little about why and how these habits are sometimes tempered to promote more sustainable coexistence. In Majority Minority, Justin Gest wields polling research, historical analysis, and interview-based fieldwork inside six of the world’s few societies that have already experienced a majority minority transition to understand what factors produce different social outcomes. Grounded in rich narratives and surprising survey findings, Majority Minority reveals that this contentious milestone and its accompanying identity politics are ultimately subject to unifying or divisive governance.

Justin Gest is an Associate Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He is the author of six books, primarily on the politics of immigration and demographic change—all from Oxford University Press or Cambridge University Press. He has also provided commentary or reporting to a number of broadcast networks, including ABC, BBC, CBC, CNN, and NPR, and news publications including The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, POLITICO, Reuters, The Times, and The Washington Post. From 2010 to 2014, Professor Gest was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Harvard University’s Departments of Government and Sociology. From 2007 to 2010, he co-founded and served as the co-director of the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Co-sponsored by the Center for American Political Studies (CAPS), Harvard University

About the Weatherhead Migration Cluster: The Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs awarded a “research cluster” award to FXB Center Director of Research Jacqueline Bhabha and Harvard Graduate School of Education Associate Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson for a 3-year seminar series on migration. Dr. Vasileia Digidiki, an FXB Health and Human Rights fellow, is also a core member of the cluster. The title of the research cluster is “Building Inclusion, Sustaining Solidarity: Frontline Host Communities, Distress Migrants and the Role of the State.” It is construed to include work that covers both government and non-government practice and how it impacts the well-being or rights of refugees and other distress migrants. The funding supports a group of Harvard doctoral students working on topics related to the cluster’s focus, and a regular seminar series open to all members of the Harvard community.