Tell About the South: Hannah Gill

Please join us for a lunchtime lecture by one of UNC’s foremost “engaged scholars,” Hannah Gill from the Institute for the Study of the Americas.

Over the past four decades, the South has experienced rapid demographic changes, with some of the nation’s fastest growing immigrant populations. North Carolina is at the center of these transformations: from 2000-2010, the state’s foreign-born populations grew at more than double the national rate, with Latino/a populations increasing to nearly a million people. North Carolina’s immigrants face many barriers to integration, including higher poverty and school drop-out rates, more likely victimization from hate crimes, and below average wages.

Gill, the director of the UNC Latino Migration Project, will describe how local governments in North Carolina are working with immigrants and refugees to implement comprehensive integration strategies through a program called Building Integrated Communities. She will discuss how this long-term planning and leadership development process is shaped by local actors, histories, and politics. A UNC alumna, Gill is the author of  The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina: New Roots in the Old North State (UNC Press, 2010). Gill’s community partner from High Point, Alvena Heggins, was recently honored by the White House as a “Champion of Change.”