Migration and Borders

1 Course Unit

We live in an interconnected world of ever-intensifying flows of people, goods, and ideas. Rather than giving rise to a "borderless world," however, these flows have instead led to the proliferation and elaboration of borders on a planetary scale. This introductory course explores this paradox, evaluating the links between migration and borders in different contexts across the globe. We ask a number of related questions: What is migration? What is a border? What is the relationship between migration and borders? How might anthropology - the study of what it means to be human - shed light on this relationship? In so doing, we explore a number of case studies from archaeological, biological, cultural, and linguistic perspectives to better understand migration and borders as conjoined anthropological phenomena. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit