Transactions and Trajectories: The Social Life of Chinese Migrant Photographs

Handprints in the Archives: Exploring the Emotional Life of the State

Surveying Hong Kong in the 1950s: Western Humanitarians and the ‘Problem’ of Chinese Refugees

Global Displacements and Emplacement: The Forced Exile and Resettlement Experiences of Ethnic Chinese

Aging, Activism, and the Archive: Feminist Perspectives for the 21st Century

Laura is a historian of global migration whose research explores the history of refugees, race and humanitarianism. 

She is the author of Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard University Press, 2016), which looks at how race influenced the character of the international refugee regime with particular attention to how it shaped the migration and resettlement of Chinese refugees to British white settler societies during the cold war. 

Laura's work has also appeared in a variety of international and national academic journals including the Journal of Refugee Studies, the Canadian Historical Review, the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association and the Urban History Review. 

Her current research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, investigates the history of sanctuary in North America from the 19th-century to the present. The project explores how secular and religious offers of sanctuary enforced notions of deserving recipients and challenged the authority and legitimacy of the nation-state.

Refugee and Human Rights Issues

Immigration

Canadian History

Heritage

Race Relations

Global Migration 

Humanitaranism

Sanctuary

English

French

ActiveHistory.ca: History Matters

Lessons from the Japanese Canadian internments: Policies built on fear won’t make us safer

Vietnam’s boat people: How four families found refuge in B.C.

Vote Compass: Green, NDP supporters most open to accepting more refugees

Don’t treat history as a civics lesson

Laura Madokoro: Jim and Joanne Chu, and remembering the first Chinese refugees settled in Canada

Assistant Professor, History and Classical Studies

The Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) is a federally incorporated, not-for-profit association. The ACA represents English-speaking archivists in Canada, with headquarters in Ottawa. Our mission is to provide the archival profession leadership and to facilitate an understanding and appreciation of Canada's archival heritage.

Laura Madokoro, McGill University

We are witnessing the largest migration of people fleeing war and difficulty since WW2. How should states face these challenges? Are there solutions that politicians are ignoring? To discuss are four McGill professors: Francois Crépeau, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants; Adelle Blackett, Director, Labour Law & Development Research Laboratory; Jill Hanley, School of Social Work, co-founder of the Immigrant Workers Center in Montreal, and; Laura Madokoro, History, specializing in the relationship between race, migration and humanitarianism.  Moderated by Jacquie Rourke.  Produced by McGill Multimedia, with the support of Canal Savoir.

McGill Talks Episode 2  Global Migration

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