Hastings Center News

Hastings Scholar Nancy Berlinger Selected for Bellagio Center Residency

Research Scholar Nancy Berlinger is doing original research at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center on the shores of Lake Como, Italy, as part of a selective academic writing residency. The Bellagio Center supports senior level policy-makers, nonprofit leaders, and others whose work promotes human flourishing, with a particular focus on issues that have a direct impact on vulnerable populations.  Berlinger is working on a book project on migrants as “social” citizens of the places where they settle.

Some of her recent work, including an essay in AEON, has outlined a “social membership” argument concerning settled migrants. Berlinger is interested in filling in this argument in a way that is useful to policy-makers and to people who think about cities, where most migrants  settle. She is especially interested in the situation of migrants who lack access to national citizenship or permanent legal residence status, and whether a concept of local social citizenship can support inclusion and fairness toward unauthorized migrants and migrants with unclear status, such as guest workers.

Berlinger codirects the Undocumented Patients Project, a knowledge hub on health care access for unauthorized migrants in the United States. She also researches justice questions facing aging societies and considers the immense role of the migrant workforce in care work.