Since World War II, museums have opened up to the possibility of memorializing human suffering ranging from the horrors of genocide (concentration camps, detention and torture sites, slave ships) to marginalization of a way of life (see previous Human Rights Forum column on the nomadic Roma). I argue that these visual renditions of injustice can be used in two distinct ways: to elicit empathy with the sufferers and to generate a collective reflection on human rights. What does “their” suffering “over there” means for “our” life “over here”?

I advocate for an anthropology that is as concerned with the production of knowledge as with its dissemination and use. The humanity of those we study cannot be articulated through academic publications alone. We need to broker our knowledge through other media that speak directly to diverse publics, and to engage them in dialogue about issues prompted by the research. For me, this means not only writing about the human condition of aging in low-income urban enclaves, but also curating exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York and the Smithsonian Institution. Enlarging the research site from a neighborhood to a county has allowed me to explore recently the ethnic, national and social class diversity that characterizes the immigrant experience. A traveling exhibition The Immigrant Experience in Prince George’s County is comprised of panels that account for immigration to the country, state and county and animated by a video where nationals from Asia, Africa and Latin America narrate their experiences throughout the life course. Since taking to the road last year, it has been shown at professional conferences, university classrooms, and public events. Reactions to the exhibition differ but bring forth a consideration of “the other”: Who are these people? Are they illegal? Do they embody too little (or too much) of the American Dream? Audience responses as varied as these have human rights implications that I believe an anthropologist can help unravel.

The Immigrant Experience panels contextualize the life histories in the video. Together, the panels and video teach us that immigration is about human mobility; that the story of the nation is about immigration; that to be an immigrant is also to be an emigrant from somewhere. They also help construe a vision of a cosmopolitan world rather than a conglomerate of bounded nation-states. While the newcomers addressing us in the video illustrate the political economy of human mobility, it is how they make sense of the transformation in their lives within their households and neighborhoods that narrows the differences between “them” and “us.”

The project provided an opportunity not only to educate students but to train future citizens, in that undergraduate and graduate students participated in the production of the exhibition components. I teach immigration by involving the students in service-learning activities at organizations that assist immigrants. By involving diverse audiences in dialogues about the topic of immigration, I think we contribute to exploring the consequences of dehumanizing people just because they were not born in the US.

I also seek to show that, by leaving established public opinion concerns unexplored, we contribute to criminalizing the other. The public needs to have facts and feedback to current tropes, such as that the immigrant workers take jobs away from the native born. Their fears need to be addressed that in a recession, immigrants burden the state for services. I like to promote the idea that, by engaging in dialogue together, we examine assumptions and, more importantly, bring home the fact that we need to think who we are as a nation. It is unethical to expose so many immigrant individuals to fear – of incarceration, deportation, separation from loved ones by declining to have open discussions within communities in which differences of perceptions can be freely discussed.

The exhibition normalizes the immigrant experience by viewing the nation’s history through the eyes of its immigrant population, past and present, and gives voice to contemporary immigrants. It incorporates immigrants into the national conversation about immigration as diverse and complex human beings and not merely as stereotypes of political discourse.

Judith Freidenberg can be contacted at jfreiden@umd.edu.

Gretchen E Schafft is the outgoing contributing editor of Human Rights Forum, the AN column of the AAA Committee for Human Rights.