Migration & Culture
Spring 2004 Prof Koptiuch Arizona State
University West Phoenix, Arizona
Course Description & Objectives
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:
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how options to migrate are socially constituted, and examine
the recent emergence of ÒtransmigrantsÓ whose lives cut across national
boundaries.
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how both long-standing and recent structural forces 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.
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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.
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how migrants are situated in and navigate through social
processes of migration.
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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.
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how migrants resist both 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
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discourses about im/migration, by policy makers, citizens,
and migrants in public and popular culture
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immigration issues and controversies pertaining to Arizona
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local, national, and global immigration debates, with an
eye to how 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.
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