Crossing Borders / Global Migrations
MWF 11-11:50am Friends 210
Spring 2012
Prof. Chip Gagnon
324 Muller Center
tel. 274-1103
Office hours: MWF 12-1pm and by appointment
e-mail:
Go to daily reading assigments
Last revised 2/8/2012
Links:
-
Crossing Borders blog
- Migration
News
- Migration
Information Source
- Immigration
Policy Center
- Immigration agencies of countries
around the world
- Other migration
links
The movement of people across borders is a central political issue throughout the world. In North and South, East and West, the issue of migration is a controversial one that has at times even become the focus of violence. Although most of us are aware of the mobility of goods and capital in a global economy, we tend to be less aware that the mobility of labor too is an integral part of the global economic system, or that most migration takes place not between North and South, but within the South. We also tend to forget that the movement of people, both as workers and as refugees, is not a new phenomenon. But we also lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the world's population, including in the poorest countries, do not migrate across international borders.
The movement of people from their homelands into other parts of the world changes the migrants themselves as well as the receiving communities. Population mobility across international borders and the resultant diasporas or transnational communities thus raise questions about the meanings of borders; the nature of identity and culture and their relationship to politics; and the realities of multiculturalism even in places that think of themselves as monocultural.
Given the centrality of population movements to global politics, this course seeks to answer some of the following questions:
These are a few of the questions that will be informed by our examination of cases from around the globe, using a range of texts, including journalistic accounts, academic writings, theorizations of migration, fiction, films, and the words of migrants themselves. We'll also consider how movement in our own lives has shaped us, and how it fits into broader notions of migration. We'll examine migration from the macro, structural perspective, as well as the local perspective, including a consideration of migrant workers in the western New York and Finger Lakes region.
We will also be learning the process of writing a major research paper. You'll be expected to come up with a question or puzzle relating to the theme of the course to a subject that is of interest to you, and to develop a strategy for answering that question.
Required texts:
Important: These books are available at Buffalo Street Books downtown (Buffalo St in the Dewitt Mall), and can be ordered, by telephone (607) 273-8246, or preferably, by email (buffalostreetbooks@hotmail.com).Other required readings:
Readings listed as "Required" are mandatory and serve as background for class discussions. The readings are of varying complexities; some are quite difficult. If you have any questions on the readings, please ask in class, stop by my office, or e-mail me. I would suggest that you take notes on the readings as you do them, including questions about the reading or things that are unclear. The amount of reading is generally small enough that you should have time to carefully read and take notes on the readings before each class.
I expect you to do the readings and be prepared for each class. If I perceive a pattern of neglect in this area, I reserve the right to unilaterally drop you from the class.
I may also hold unscheduled "pop" quizzes on the readings.
If you do not understand the readings after we discuss them in class, please see me immediately. Some of the readings are very challenging, and I expect you to speak with me if anything is not clear.
What does "doing the readings" mean?
It doesn't mean just sitting down and mechanically going through the articles; that's a sure way to make even an interesting article boring.
Reading is an active and interactive process between the reader and the text. If you're really reading a text you are also reacting to it. I've included a wide range of texts in order to provoke a wide range of responses from readers.
Reading should also be a reflective process. To really understand an article deeply it is usually necessary to read it and think about it, and then read it again, and think about it, and discuss it with others, write about it and read it yet again. I've found that even after many readings, when I read a text in order to explain it to someone else I get new perspectives on the author's arguments and assumptions, on the text's strengths and weaknesses.
So when I say "do the readings," I mean "engage yourself with the ideas of the text." I understand that some of the texts are quite complex and that not all of them are entertaining. But struggle is part of the reading experience. If something's not clear, if it's confusing, talk about it with others outside of class, and/or bring it up in class. As I mentioned above, taking notes on a text while you read it or re-read it is also a very good way to engage the text and to make sure you understand it.
Reading Methodology:
I'd like you to involve yourself in the text so that reading is an interactive experience. Here's a suggestion:
As we do the readings and then discuss them, I'd like to have us think of them not only as political arguments or analyses, but rather as stories, or more specifically as different genres of stories all looking at a similar phenomenon. In this case we are considering stories that all involve the movement of people across borders.
Any story has main characters, both positive and negative; beginning situations, that is, the place or state in which the characters are at the start of the story, including motivations for movement; and ending situations, the place or state in which the characters find themselves at the end. In between are various kinds of events and experiences that the characters go through. Often, these experiences have major impacts on the characters, such that the end state is significantly different from the beginning; that is, the end or the end-to-be finds the characters in (perhaps) a different situation. Often they themselves are changed, but just as often they also change the people with whom they have come into contact, as well as the places they have been.
In stories about immigration and migration, the key event is movement. But what kind of movement? What "stories" are the authors of our readings telling about the movements of humans across borders? What makes immigration a special kind of movement? How does movement cause change? What kinds of meanings are given to the borders and to what is inside the borders? Keep in mind that in these stories the authors can make the main characters be individuals (either migrants or "natives"), groups of people, and/or entire countries.
In your first written assignment you'll be asked to think about movements that you've done in your life, why you've done them, how they've affected you, how they've affected the people in the places from which and to which you moved. Also think about the concept of "border" or "boundary." How does the way we think about boundaries determine how we think about what's inside those boundaries?
By looking at migration and immigration in these ways, I hope we will have a constructive and innovative set of discussions on this topic. It should also provide some interesting insight into the set of readings we'll be discussing over the course of the semester, and provide us with new insights into the movement of people across borders but also into racism, multiculturalism, and other questions of identity and culture.
In addition to the objectives listed above, this course also has the following objectives as part of the overall Politics Departmental goals:
The goal of the course is to get us to think critically about the notion of migration, and thus about the concepts of borders, groupness, movement, culture and identity. The written assignments are meant to be an integral part of this process. But so too are class participation and the readings themselves.
Class participation will count for 20 percent of the grade. Learning is an active process; if you think about the things you've learned the best, they're usually things that you haven't sat back passively and "absorbed," but rather things that you learned by actively taking part and practicing. I therefore expect each of you to be active participants in your learning. To be an effective participant also means having done the readings and being prepared to take part in discussions. All of these will go into your class participation grade, which includes:
Written Assignments will count for the remaining 80
percent of the grade.
- The grade is reduced by 1/3 of a grade for each day an assignment is late
(for example from A to A-).
- To pass the course you must hand in all of the written assignments, including
those that are ungraded.
You cannot pass the course unless you have handed in
all written assignments.
Meaning of grades:
A = excellent: intense effort and remarkable achievement.
B = good: good effort and pretty good understanding
C = okay: barely adequate amount of effort or effort that is somewhat
misfocused or mistargeted
D = inadequate effort or mistargeted effort
F = little or no effort or complete misunderstanding of expectations
If you get below a C, you should immediately come to see me so we can discuss your paper or exam.
If you have any questions about the class, the readings, the discussions, or anything else, I will be more than happy to meet with you either during office hours (MWF 12-1pm) or at some other time. To schedule another time please see me after class, or contact me by or phone (274-1103).