Gender and Immigration: Identity, Race, and Place

3 credits · Undergraduate credit

Refugees, migrants, immigrants, diaspora groups, and transnational actors are all terms that describe people who undertake different acts of mobility or travel across borders. But how are these terms different? This course focuses on these various acts of mobility (travel) to show how they are labeled differently under different political and social circumstances. We examine the gendered cultural and political meanings people and governments give to mobility, border crossing, and displacement in this significant age of globalization, transnational mobility, and search of refuge. We will examine the meanings of travel and border crossing in relation to popular concepts such as "refugee-ness", "diaspora," and "transnationalism." Have the meanings of these terms been useful in understanding the social constructions of gender identities, race, ethnicity, xenophobia, and even health and reproduction? We will particularly explore how questions of power, race, and class intersect to shape refugees and immigrants' daily struggles for justice and demands of inclusion in the rubrics of both national and transnational imagined communities. How do refugees and immigrants attempt to create and "imagine" their own social world with reference to their new locations and their homelands? And how their imaginations are interrupted by complex socio-economic and political realities? Our readings and discussion will focus on cultural and theoretical perspectives from the social sciences, specifically anthropology, history, literature, and political science. And we will take as examples the ethnographies and narratives of immigrants from different parts of the world, specifically Africa, the Middle East Asia, and Latin America.