Meet Llana Barber, New Director of the Immigration History Research Center

Professor Llana Barber is the 4th Director of the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) and the third holder of the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair, named after the IHRC’s first director. She plans to advance the conversation around immigration in the past and present and lift up diverse scholarly voices.

From a Dance Degree to a PhD in History 

Barber first ventured into the archives as a college senior—but not as a student of history. She initially majored in dance and performance studies at the University of California, Berkeley, planning to become a dancer or choreographer, but her interests rapidly changed after doing her senior honors thesis on the 1960s avant-garde Judson Dance Theater.

“I was so compelled by archival work,” Barber says. “I just started asking myself, where does history come from? Where do we get these stories about what happened in the past?”

She continued studying history in graduate school, attending Boston College to earn her PhD in immigration history. In her book Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2017, she researched the small city in northern Massachusetts that became the first Latinx majority city in New England. It had gone through a steep economic decline as many white residents and businesses left for new opportunities in the suburbs. During this period of white flight, new residents from Latin America—mainly from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic—moved into Lawrence, repopulating the city. Longtime residents blamed these larger structural issues on the arrival of immigrants, although Latinx people helped uplift the city by investing in its businesses, public services, and educational systems. It was this duality of Latinx people revitalizing the city while facing discrimination that made Barber interested in studying Lawrence further.

“What really interested me about Lawrence was the tremendous activism involved,” Barber shares. “A lot of the Latinx organizers in Lawrence were focused on educational activism that was ultimately going to benefit all students. I love when immigration historians focus on the ways that immigrants and second-generation Americans organize and assert their rights and make changes in a given community, not only for themselves, but for everyone in that community.”

Becoming the Newest Director

Barber’s directorship began at the University in August 2024, although she had known about the IHRC for a long time.

“I followed the center’s work with admiration, particularly under the leadership of Erika Lee, the previous director,” she says. “When I saw that there was going to be an opening for a new director, there was no question. For a lot of immigration historians, this is a dream job to direct the center and work with the great colleagues here at the University of Minnesota.”

The IHRC’s location was also a major pull for her, as Minneapolis and St. Paul are home to many diverse and culturally rich communities. “The Twin Cities have been so positively transformed by immigrant and refugee settlement. And I think that that history deserves to be documented and preserved and shared.”

As the director, Barber continues the IHRC’s mission for interdisciplinary research on migration, race, and ethnicity in the US, and promotes research with scholars across multiple fields. “I would like to see the IHRC really shifting conversations within the field of immigration history and advancing the public conversations that we're having about the immigrant past and present,” she says. 

She also wants to share the IHRC’s resources with the greater Minnesotan community by working closely with institutional partners and centering the voices of immigrants, refugees, and BIPOC historians. “I'm excited that the University of Minnesota has both this spirit of collaboration within the institution, but also engagement with community groups,” says Barber. “I really am looking forward to the IHRC serving the community.”

Responding to Current Events

For Barber, researching immigration history in the US is a way to make sense of the present by drawing connections between past and current events. Her current research investigates the relationship between imperialism and immigration, specifically around Haitian immigrants and the US’s response to asylum pleas. “Intervention into the Caribbean is part of what precipitated migration into the US,” says Barber. 

Her work focuses on how the US immigration system has changed over the past half a century to become what she calls a system of “mass exclusion.” “The more I started to think about the project, the more I realized that immigration historians write about the people who get here. But it is increasingly clear that most of US policy right now is designed to keep the vast majority of the world's population out,” shares Barber. 

Haitian asylum seekers were at the center of this shift. “Starting in the 1970s, a lot of these US transformations were precipitated by Haitian efforts to seek asylum in the US. Haitian asylum seekers were arriving, and they were being overwhelmingly dismissed as economic migrants and repatriated.” 

In addition to being the IHRC director, Barber is a faculty member in the Department of History and is currently teaching a course about global migration to the US from the 19th century to the present. The course touches on topics such as what causes people to migrate, along with issues of xenophobia, assimilation, citizenship, and race relations in America.

She will also engage in a discussion at February 2025’s History Book Club with previous IHRC director Erika Lee around historical research, migration trends, and the current polarized conversation about immigration in the US. 

“We are in a moment right now when it's more important than ever to resist all the narratives that scapegoat immigrants, and that try to create fear or division,” says Barber. “It's really important to amplify the reality that immigration benefits the United States, and that it's not only good for immigrants, but good for everyone.”