Collegiate Affiliation
History
Director,
Immigration History Research Center
American Studies
Chicano & Latino Studies

Llana Barber is the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair of Immigration History and the director of the Immigration History Research Center. She is a scholar of immigration and Latine history with a focus on the Caribbean diaspora. Her first book, Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000, explored the history of New England’s first Latine-majority city. This work emphasized the impact of deindustrialization and suburbanization on Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the Puerto Rican and Dominican activism that transformed the city. Latino City won the Kenneth Jackson Award from the Urban History Association, and the Lois P. Rudnick Prize from the New England American Studies Association. 

Her current research project documents Haitian migration to the United States, Dominican Republic, and Bahamas in the late 20th century, and militarized efforts to exclude Haitian asylum seekers. Barber’s work investigates the impact of anti-Black racism on migrant experiences. Her article, “Anti-Black Racism and the Nativist State,” placed Black mobility and anti-Black racism at the center of the history of US immigration restriction from the colonial era through the present.