Migration & Culture     Spring 2005    Prof Koptiuch    Arizona State University West    Phoenix, Arizona

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“WHY MIGRATION?” Country Posters

Team Projects: Powerpoint-based Poster

Comparative Impact of Transnational Migration

                  

DUE: April 13 Powerpoint and poster to be shown in class. 

Posters will also be displayed at the Student Research Poster Session

on campus in UCB La Sala ---April 14 10:00am-3:30pm!!

Research Questions: Why do people Migrate? Why do they go to specific destinations? We approach this $10 million question by unpacking the ready answer, “in search of a better life.” Individual decisions to migrate are best understood in a transnational context that regards human migrations as a result of larger social, economic, and political processes occurring across the globe. Today’s transnational migrants build “social fields” that link together their country of origin and country of resettlement, challenging notions of citizenship, borders, and nation itself. The US is considering several proposals for guest worker/temporary worker policies and other changes in immigration policy, including some by Arizona legislators. Our country posters will provide a focused, globally comparative perspective in order to enhance public understanding of the complex reasons why people migrate. The countries are chosen from the top 10 remittance receiving countries.

 

Learning Objective: Conduct collaborative research with teammates to address the focused questions above.  Use knowledge and understanding developed in our course as conceptual framework for guiding and informing new research.

 

Goal: Contribute to the “Student Poster Session” at ASU West. Enhance public understanding of the intensity and impact of migration in the world today, beyond just the United States. Taken together, the posters offer viewers a comparative global understanding.

 

Research Sources: Fletcher Library web resource page prepared for this project by social science resource librarian Lisa Kammerlocher: http://library.west.asu.edu/subjects/SOC/soc331.html.

 

Blackboard Communication Resource: You will find a Country Posters button on our Blackboard site. Teams will be set up for each assigned country.  You can post information that you find on your site so that it is accessible to each of your teammates as you collaborate in your research. You can email each other easily from the team site as well.

 

Requirements: Prepare a team poster presentation addressing the research questions on the other side of this instruction sheet.  Try to find answers for as many of the research topics as possible.  Some data will be easier to find than others.  Some of the questions require your own analysis and interpretation of the data you find. Your research may raise additional questions to add.

 

Team Synergy: Each teammate has something special to contribute—draw on each other’s strengths, create a synergy: the working together of two or more things, people, or organizations, especially when the result is greater than the sum of their individual effects or capability!  Choose one of the four Task Roles to facilitate this. Make sure each does their part!

 

Address Your Audience:  Keep in mind that your primary audience will be students, faculty, and staff who will attend the Student Poster Session on April 14, and your worldwide web viewers later.  Most know very little about your assigned country, and even less about why its population migrates, where they go, and the impact on sending/receiving countries and the migrants themselves.  You are the experts!  Teach your audience!


COUNTRY POSTERS

Working collaboratively, research the following for your assigned country:

(Try to get data for 1960s to 2000s—can we see any patterns?)

 

1.  Top Five Countries of Destination for Migrants from your Assigned Country

 

2.  Why do migrants leave home?

What changing global/local social, economic, political conditions mobilized people for migration from their homeland? Why can’t they find their “better life” in their own homelands? Investigate the following possible reasons and find out as much as you can:

a.      Displacement of traditional village and rural economies and household survival strategies (e.g. by cash crop farming, global competition, “natural” disasters …)

b.      Impact of global economic restructuring (trade agreements (e.g. NAFTA), restructuring requirements (e.g. by International Monetary Fund or World Bank, foreign debt payments …)

c.      Impact of foreign investment on people’s lives (agrobusiness, transnational corporate investment in export processing industries (like maquiladoras), tourism …)

d.      Chain migration patterns that facilitate continued migration and family reunification

 

3.  Why do they go to the top five destination countries?

What “bridges” or linkages with other countries determine which countries migrants go to in order to seek the proverbial better life? We’ve studied how migration is patterned, not arbitrary. Consider the following as possible reasons for linkages between the sending-receiving countries:

·        colonial legacy, wars, alliances, special trade relations, other historical linkages, prior migration history, language/culture connections, foreign investment (see 2 c) …

 

4.  What is the impact of migration on:

  1. Sending country

a.      Amount of remittances from the top countries as percent of overall remittances received

b.      Does migration help solve unemployment problems or not?

c.      Holes in family and social structure

d.      Brain drain, skilled and unskilled worker loss

e.      Transnationalization of local cultural practices, identities, due to links w/migrants

f.       Changing gender relations

g.      Political impact of transmigrants on local/national homeland community

 

  1. Receiving countries (try to do the top three at least)

a.      Percentage of immigrants who come from your assigned country

b.      Percentages of immigrants/foreign born in the workforce

c.      Estimated rate of legal/illegal immigration

d.      How do most migrants from your assigned country arrive in the receiving countries?

e.      Per capita income of migrants (and/or typical wage rates—convert to US $)

f.       Racial/ethnic tension, anti-immigrant sentiment/politics/policies

g.      Any temporary or guest worker immigration policies? When introduced? Why and what goals do they have?

h.      Is permanent citizenship possible for immigrants? For children of foreign born? (rules)

i.        Transnationalization of local cultural practices by presence of immigrants

j.        What are some of the recent problems/successes/political controversies due to the country’s immigration experience? (news reports are a good source for this)

k.      What overall immigration strategy does the country most closely follow? Use the classification explained by Stephen Castles & Mark J. Miller in “New Ethnic Minorities and Society” (handout): exclusion, assimilation, or multicultural

 

  1. Migrants themselves

a.      Identity, language, lifestyle

b.      Self sacrifice in country of resettlement to send remittances home

c.      Active agents in arenas they don’t control (Sassen)

d.      Tensions within families (e.g. foreign born parents vs kids born in resettlement country)

e.      Migrants’ politicization (e.g. as result of experiencing racism or anti-immigrant sentiment)

 

5. What can the USA learn from the case of your assigned country?

_______________________________________________________

 

POSTER DESIGN

To present your information in simple, brief, and bold, eye-catching design, make a PowerPoint slide show of 20-25 slides. Print your slides (color is best!), layout and attach the slides on the poster board and supplement as you wish.  Use large font for easier readability—e.g. 16-20 point text in bold font. Concentrate on what is most important to understand our focused theme. 

 

Don’t overload your poster with details that may be too complex to grasp in poster format.  Make it fun and informative!  Dr K will provide one large fold-up poster board for each group.

 

POSTERS SHOULD ALSO INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

Remember—be brief, catch the eye and attention of passers-by with casual interest in our subject

·        Large title, and names of poster team members!

·        Maps—put the country in global regional context; include arrows linking it to migrant destination  countries

·        Data charts, graphs for effective display —e.g. migration rates/destinations; remittances; per capita income in both sending and receiving countries

·        Photos of your country’s homeland/peoples

·        Photos of migrants in the receiving countries, if available

·        IMPORTANT! Include at least one recent news item about immigration issues in your assigned country.  You might want to include several news item headlines (with source & dates) on immigration issues. You may get these from US newspapers.

·        Anything else to catch the eye of your viewers—flags, arrows, circles, highlights, objects!

 

COMPUTER LAB MARCH 30!!  We will meet in CLCC 244 on March 30.  Teams will have class time to work their posters.  There will be two computers per team, so you’ll need to work collaboratively.  Here is a suggested plan of work:

 

·        March 23   Teams assigned. Review assignment. Assign roles and responsibilities. If time this week, do some exploratory advance research—but only if you’ve finished the assignment for March 30 (read In and Out of Morocco, prepare for quiz)!

·        March 30   CLCC 244 Half of the class will be allocated to your team project research.

·        April 6        Class will be absorbed by Migrants in the City mini-presentations. Refine your poster materials through Blackboard forum and email communication.

·        April 13       Posters are due! Can anyone help set up posters in La Sala on Thursday April 14? Answer questions of viewers? Be sure to go by and see them on display!


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