Introducing “Labor Studies Now” speaker series
The UCLA Labor Studies Department presents book talks, film screenings and research workshops exploring the top issues facing the labor movement today
UCLA Labor Studies | October 22, 2025
Introducing the UCLA Department of Labor Studies’ 2025-2026 colloquium speaker series, “Labor Studies Now.” Each quarter, public dialogues and research workshops will explore pressing issues facing workers and the labor movement today, including the changing world of work and its connections to social and economic inequality, immigration and criminalization, environmental and housing injustice, and political conflict and polarization.
The series will bring together UCLA faculty, graduate and undergraduate students with community leaders and members of the public to think critically about the past, present and future of the labor movement and allied causes. Conversations will encourage participants to consider how to meet our existential challenges with just and sustainable solutions.
Fall Quarter: “Labor Studies Now: Contending with Conservatism and Fascism”
Labor and American Conservatism in the U.S., Then and Now
Date: Thursday, October 30 at 12:00-2:00 pm,
Location: History Conference Room, 6275 Bunche Hall
Kristoffer (Kit) Smemo, UCLA Labor Studies and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE)
Join Kristoffer (Kit) Smemo, UCLA Labor Studies instructor, for a discussion of his recent book, Making Republicans Liberal Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise. Smemo’s book uncovers how unions and the civil rights movement during the mid-twentieth century forced Republican leaders to swing left to win the votes of organized workers. From the 1930s through the 1970s, some prominent Republicans accepted labor’s right to organize, passed anti-discrimination laws and legalized abortion—policies that both challenged conservative constituencies and fell short of movement demands. Learn how the legacy of these leaders is still visible today in conservative “pro-worker” think tanks like American Compass that hope to influence Trump’s labor policy in the context of a new labor upsurge.
Film screening and Q&A with Director: Eternos Indocumentados: Central American Refugees in the United States (2018)
Date: Wednesday, November 5
Screening at 5:00-6:00pm; Post-film Q&A 6:00-6:45pm
Location: 121 Dodd Hall or TBD
Jennifer Cárcamo, Filmmaker, and Leisy Abrego, UCLA Chicana/o Studies
Join filmmaker Jennifer Cárcamo and Professor Leisy Abrego for a screening of the documentary film Eternos Indocumentados: Central American Refugees in the United States (2018). The screening will be followed by a Q&A discussion with the director, Jennifer Cárcamo.
Film description: In July 2014, mainstream US media became flooded with images of what they termed “unaccompanied Central American children.” Most of these children—many coming with their parents—were fleeing from the violent consequences of U.S. intervention in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Once in the United States, they were detained in what migrants have come to label “hieleras” (ice boxes) in makeshift detention centers around the country. Rather than providing asylum to these refugees, the Obama Administration used this “humanitarian crisis” to expand the previously defunct practice of family detention. By the spring of 2015, more than 3,000 refugee women, children, and members of the LGBTQI community were illegally detained. Based on interviews with recently arrived Central Americans as well as interviews with organizers leading the struggle on the ground in Central America, this film captures the stories of Central American refugees and explores the root causes of forced migration. In the words of the late Salvadoran poet, Roque Dalton, as he says in his Poema de Amor, this film is about los Eternos Indocumentados (the Eternally Undocumented).
Research Talk with Dr Jennifer Cárcamo on Historias Prohibidas del Istmo: Central American Communists during the Rise of Twentieth Century Fascism, 1920-1940
Date: Thursday, November 6 at 2:00-3:30pm
Location: 10383 Bunche Hall
Jennifer Cárcamo, filmmaker, scholar and historian
Join Jennifer Cárcamo, independent filmmaker and scholar and postdoctoral fellow at UC Irvine for a research discussion exploring the historical and ideological origins of Central America’s communist parties, specifically in El Salvador, Guatemala and Costa Rica, from 1920-1940. Cárcamo’s talk will focus on an excerpt from her book, titled, Bananas and (Wo)men: Communist Schoolteachers, Black Migrant Laborers, the Threat of Fascism in Costa Rica, which discusses the development of the first Communist Party of Costa Rica. Learn how women, particularly schoolteachers, were influential figures in the formative and developing years of the first Communist Party of Costa Rica. The groundbreaking organizing of these women, inspired by their socialist feminist values, was fundamental to the trajectory of the party, including their struggle against fascism.
Winter quarter preview: “Labor Studies Now: Rethinking Movement Strategy and Backlash”
Guest lecture with Ruth Milkman: The U.S. Labor Movement in the 2020s: Achievements and Challenges
Date: Thursday, Jan 29th at 12:00-1:30pm
Location: TBD
Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, joint appointment, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and CUNY Graduate Center
Guest lecture with Kim Voss: Frame Backfire: The Trouble with Civil Rights Appeals in the Contemporary United States
Date: Thursday, March 5 at 12:00-1:30pm
Location: TBD
Kim Voss, Professor of Sociology at the University of California Berkeley
UCLA Labor Studies is the first department of its kind at the University of California. Since its founding in the early 2000s, the academic program has been renowned for its commitment to engaged student learning in community worker settings, rigorous hands-on research and courses that explore urgent labor and social justice issues.
