Migration &
Culture
Koptiuch/ASU
West
Description/Objectives:
This course examines migration and
culture embedded
in a transnational field of social, economic, and political
processes.
Based on current approaches in social sciences, (im)migration is
viewed
as the effect of a patterned process of globalization of capital
and culture.
This entails building objective and subjective "bridges" that
link migrants’
homelands to their "host" societies. We thus investigate how
options to
migrate are socially produced, and examine the recent emergence
of new
kinds of migrants whose lives cut across national boundaries.
Long-standing
structural forces and international connections underlie
contemporary migrations:
colonialism, war and military occupation/intervention,
globalization of
labor recruitment and economic interactions, global flows of
information,
media, and culture. The historical focus of the course is on
migration
since the late 20th century, an era of new migration pressures
ushered
in by the end of the Cold War and current global restructuring.
Historical
precedents provide comparative scope, and aid in identifying key
conditions
that make possible shifts in relations between migration and
culture today.
In addition, the course will consider
major cities
as strategic sites in the postcolonial world economy where a
multiplicity
of migrants, cultures, and identities that have been
deterritorialized
from local settings all over the world are reterritorialized in
urban centers.
Caught between the nation and the globe, migrants negotiate this
contradictory
experience. They actively manipulate their diasporic identities
to accommodate
their shifting positioning; but migrants also resist their
devaluation
as Other within nations of settlement, and their subordination
within a
transnational capitalist system that increasingly depends on
their labor.
The course also examines immigration debates to consider how
cultural hybridity
of diasporic communities has challenged native citizens
worldwide to re-imagine
their own national communities in this transnational era.
EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES
-
Describe migration as a patterned process for
migrants and
refugees
-
Explain how migration is embedded in a
transnational field
-
Explain key approaches to migration current in
social sciences
(at macrostructural, intermediate institutional, and subject
levels)
-
Explain why people migrate, and why they go to
specific destinations
-
Explain impact of migration on home and host
communities
(contributions and problems)
-
Intelligently interpret and intervene in
contemporary im/migration
debates
Return to base