Migration & CultureÊÊÊÊ Spring 2005 ÊÊ Prof KoptiuchÊÊÊ Arizona State
University WestÊÊÊ Phoenix, Arizona
Course Description & Objective
This interdisciplinary course examines im/migration and
culture embedded in a transnational field of social, economic, and political
processes. We follow current approaches in social sciences that view (im)migration
as the effect of a patterned process of globalization of capital and culture.
This process builds objective and subjective ÒbridgesÓ that historically
link migrantsÕ homelands to their ÒhostÓ societies, both in the U.S. and
around the world. Drawing on empirical research and theoretical analyses,
topics we study include:
- how options to migrate are socially constituted, and examine the
recent emergence of ÒtransmigrantsÓ whose lives cut across national boundaries.
- how both long-standing and recent structural processes and international
connections underlie contemporary migrations: colonialism, war and military
occupation/intervention, development, globalization of labor recruitment
and economic interactions, global flows of technology, information, media,
and culture.
- major cities as strategic sites in the postcolonial global 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.
- how migrants are situated in and navigate through social processes
of migration.
- how migrants negotiate their contradictory experience of being
caught between the nation and the globe, and manipulate their diasporic identities
to adjust to their shifting positioning.
- how migrants resist their devaluation as Other within nations
of settlement, and their subordination within a transnational capitalist
system that increasingly depends on their labor even as this contribution
appears devalued
- discourses about im/migration, by policy makers, citizens, and
migrants in public and popular culture
- local, national, and global immigration debates, with an eye to
how the cultural hybridity of diasporic communities has challenged native
citizens worldwide to re-imagine their own national communities in this transnational
era.
The historical focus of the course is on migration since
the late 20th century (early 1970s), an era of new migration pressures ushered
in by 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.Ê
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