The Africa Workshop will present a lecture on November 3rd and Noov 4th by Faranak Miraftab Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

Tuesday, November 3
4 – 5:30 pm
Haven Hall 4th Floor Seminar Room 4700

“Lottery Visas in Togo and Revitalization in Rural Rust Belt: Global-Local Complications” This presentation builds on her global investigation of recruitment of itinerant laborers from Togo, Mexico, and Detroit to to at a meat packing plant in rural Illinois.

Wednesday, November 4
Noon- 1pm
LunchUp presentation at North Campus Art and Architecture Building Room: 2213

“Global Heartland: Theorizing Place and Politics of Placemaking in the Global Era”
This presentation draws on her forthcoming book, Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives and Local Placemaking (Indiana University Press, January 2016). I focus on an often overlooked space in metro-centric urban scholarship of globalization—a small company town in the rural Midwest. Studying the trans-national and trans-local lives of workers recruited from Togo, Mexico and Detroit to work at the meat packing plant in the rural Illinois, Global Heartland offers a fresh perspective on materiality of place and politics of placemaking.

Faranak is the co-editor of these two books:
Cities of the Global South Reader
Cities and Inequalities in a Global and Neoliberal World