ANTH 363 - Anthropology of Displacement, Migration, and Transnationalism

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as INTL 363) It has become a basic truism to say that we are living in an age of “migration crisis.” But what exactly does it mean to be displaced? How have certain forms of migration come to be labeled “illegal”? Why are some forms of migration deemed “voluntary” in contrast to others? Where do these distinctions come from and how do they matter in everyday life? This advanced seminar sets out to address such questions, among many others, by introducing students to the anthropological study of displacement, migration, and transnationalism. Through scholarly texts, film, and literature across a wide range of regional contexts, we pursue two interrelated tracks of inquiry, as students develop semester-long independent writing projects. One track is historical: we examine imperial legacies of the native-migrant divide, the postcolonial partition of nation-states, the uneven development of a globalized division of labor across the world, and how these fraught histories endure within the present. Our second line of inquiry is primarily ethnographic: it concerns the paradoxes of displacement in everyday human experiences, such as waiting in transit, making a home in exile, and the striking capacity of borders to appear invisible or real to the point of being deadly, depending on who or what crosses them, and how. Taken together, the course offers advanced students a multidisciplinary and multidimensional understanding of how human (im)mobilities are governed, contested, and experienced across the world – and how these conditions shape the possibilities and limits of transnational solidarity today. China Sajadian.

Recommended: Previous coursework in Anthropology or International Studies.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS