Liette Gilbert

Title/Position: Graduate Program Director and Professor
Department/Faculty/Institution: Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University
Degree(s)/School(s): PhD Urban Planning/University of California Los Angeles, MA Urban Planning/University of California Los Angeles, BAP Landscape Architecture/Universite de Montreal
E-mail: gilbertl@yorku.ca

MCRI Projects: C2: North America Research Cluster.

Background: Liette Gilbert's research interests are articulated around two poles: immigration, multiculturalism and citizenship (multicultural cities and identities; politics of difference in the city; neoliberalisation of immigration policy; social justice, media representations of immigration and multiculturalism, and North American border politics) and urban and environmental politics (planning, design and urbanism; exurban growth and environmental conservation; political ecology of landscapes; and environmental justice).

Her research examines the oppositional struggles and alternative narratives or claims voiced by marginalized people as a form of resistance and expressions of citizenships. Both her teaching and research are anchored in a critical analysis of the conventional and marginalizing processes of urban development. Gilbert's interest in studying the social and political economy of the built environment is particularly focused on the spatial representations of economic domination in relation to the changing forms of social organizations and the implications for equity, justice and democratic participation in multicultural societies.

Research Interests: Immigration; Multiculturalism; Citizenship; Urban Politics; Social Justice.

Selected Publications:

Gilbert, L. (forthcoming). Mexico City: Elusive suburbs, ubiquitous peripheries. In J. Nijman (ed.) North American Suburbanism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Gilbert, L.,  Boudreau, J-A. &  Labbé, D. (2016). Uneven state formalization on peri-urban housing production in Hanoi and Mexico City: Comparative reflections from the global South. Environment and Planning A. 48(12): 2382-2401.

Gilbert, L.,  Khosla, P. & De Jong, F. (2016). Precarization and Urban Growth in Metropolitan Mexico City. Especialidades: Revista de temas contemporaneous sobre lugares, politica y cultural. 6(6): 5-32.

Gilbert, L. & De Jong, F. (2015). Entanglements of Periphery and Informality in Mexico City. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 

Gilbert, L., Sandberg, A. & Wekerle, G. R. (eds.)(2013). The Moraine Battles:  Nature, Sprawl, and Conservation in the Toronto Region. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Gilbert, L. (2013). Immigration as Local Politics: Rebordering Immigration through Deterrence and Incapacitation. In J.A. Downing & J.X. Inda (eds.) Governing Immigration Through Crime: A Reader. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 181-194.

Gilbert, L. & Kolnick, K.A. (2012). Constitutional Failure or Anti-Immigrant Success? Local Anti-Immigrant Ordinances and Sentiments in the United States. In M. Veréa (ed.)  Antiimigrant sentiments, actions and policies in North America and the European Union. Mexico City: CISAN- Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte, Uiversidad Nacional Autónoma de México, pp. 83-102.

Gilbert, L. (2010). North American Anti-Immigration Rhetorics: Continental Circulation and Global Resonance of Discursive Integration . In I. Hussein (ed.) The Impacts of NAFTA on North America. New York: Palgrave. 63-91.

Gilbert, L. (2009). Negotiating Diversity: Tensions between National Discourses and Urban Practices in North America. In A.G. Gagnon & B. Jouve(eds.) Facing Cultural Diversity: Cities Under Stress.  Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, pp. 67-83.

Gilbert, L. Wekerle, G.R. & Sandberg, L.A. (2009). Regional Resistances in an Exurban Region: Intersections of the Politics of Place and the Politics of Scale. In R. Mahon & R. Keil (eds.) Leviathan Undone? Towards a Political Economy of Scale. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 247-264.

Gilbert, L. Wekerle, G.R. & Sandberg, L.A. (2009). Challenging Sprawl, Preserving Nature: Reframing Environmentalism on the Oak Ridges Moraine. In L. Adkin (ed.) Environmental Conflicts and Democracy in Canada. University of British Columbia, pp. 279-297.