The World in Rome: Pathways of Migration and Citizenship

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

How and why do some of the roads taken by migrants (including refugees) lead to Rome and Italy? What are the challenges faced by migrants upon their arrival, and on their path to citizenship? How does civil society intervene to mitigate those challenges, and to facilitate mutual integration and engagement? What are the distinctive features of Roman lay and Catholic approaches to migration? The course addresses such questions, building on contemporary Rome both as a compelling case study and as a gateway to the causes, lived experiences, and consequences of global migrations. Students investigate how the experience of the city is at the same time the experience of globalization, embodied in older and new residents’ everyday life in the built environment; and they appreciate situated social engagement and its potentialities. The course builds on anthropology as a holistic social science, and it attends to migration- related aesthetics (e.g., art, movies) and Catholic Social Teachings that prove extremely salient in Rome. Attention to the realities of the host civil society is fundamental: migrants’ reception and integration happens at the local, neighborhood level and in interaction with residents and larger communities. This indispensable attention to Roman realities, together with scholarly accounts from regions of migrant origin and transit, enables students to ground their knowledge in local, Italian, historical, and Euro-Mediterranean contexts. Thus, the course does not impart a collection of facts about immigrants as insular entities, but provides entry points into some of the patterns accounting for global migrations; the lived experience of international borders; the interplay of sovereignty, democracy, citizenship, colonialism, decolonization, racialization, and human rights; the relationship between Islam, Catholicism, and the gendered public sphere; human smuggling; and the emotional, ethical, and embodied aspects of migration and of civic engagement.