SOC585E Migration and Transnationalism-Migrating People, Migrating Culture:Optics, Methods,and Impacts

Faculty of Social Studies
Autumn 2013
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 10 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Radka Klvaňová, Ph.D., M.A. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Ladislav Rabušic, CSc.
Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Contact Person: Ing. Soňa Enenkelová
Supplier department: Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Timetable
Thu 26. 9. 16:00–17:40 U36, Thu 14. 11. 16:00–17:40 U36, Thu 5. 12. 16:00–17:40 U36
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.

The capacity limit for the course is 10 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/10, only registered: 0/10
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
We live in a world on the move. There are an estimated 214 million international migrants worldwide, up from 150 million in 2000. In 2010, one in nine people lived in a country where migrants made up 10 or more percent of the population. One out of every 33 persons in the world today is a migrant.
Much migration scholarship has focused on immigrant incorporation—on how migrants become part of the countries where they settle. Recent work, on both sides of the Atlantic, reveals how migrants continue to invest, vote, and pray in the countries they come from at the same time that they remain active in the economic and political life of the countries where they move. Both sending and receiving states are waking up to these dynamics and creating new ways to encourage long-term membership without residence and forms of participation and representation without full citizenship. In general, though, while more migrants live some aspects of their lives across borders, they continue to be served by legal, educational, and health care systems that remain stubbornly within the boundaries of the nation-state.
At the same time, and as a result, we are witnessing the rise of what Steve Vertovec calls “superdiverse” urban spaces. Because migrants from a wider range of countries are settling in more places, with very different legal statuses and access to rights and services, new patterns of inequality and discrimination are emerging. This new complexity is layered onto existing patterns of socioeconomic diversity, residential segregation and social exclusion.
The course departs from the intersection of migration and cultural studies. We will explore questions such as how notions of gender, race, and class circulate within transnational social fields and are reconstituted differently across borders, how social remittances or the ideas, practices, and know-how that are exchanged contribute to immigrant incorporation and homeland development, how different regimes of ethnic and religious diversity management or what Adrian Favell calls philosophies of immigration shape immigrant integration and enduring homeland ties, the ways governments use multiculturalism to reposition cities and nations geopolitically and how social welfare provision and the social safety net is being rewoven in response to migrants transnational lives—if and how do educational, health care, and legal institutions change when communities constitute themselves across space?
By the end of the semester, students should be able to:
• Define and discuss transnational studies and transnational approaches to migration;
• Understand and explain migration related phenomena in the perspective of cultural sociology and cultural studies;
• Apply the transational perspective to different domains of social life;
• Design a research methodology for studying culture in motion;
Syllabus
  • Session 1 (26.9.) Introduction to the course
  • Session 2 (14.10.) Transnational Studies and Transnational Approaches to Migration
  • Session 3 (15.10.) Migrating People, Migrating Values, and Migrating Culture
  • Group project: Design a research methodology for studying culture in motion
  • Session 4 (16.10.) The Cultural Armature of Cities
  • Group Project: What is the nature of the cultural armature in the city where you live? What would you do to make it more conducive to immigration integration?
  • Session 5 (17.10.) Using Culture to Create Diverse Communities
  • Group Project: Curate your own museum exhibit on immigration and/or cosmopolitanism
  • Session 6 (18. or 19.10.) Lecture by Peggy Levitt at Identities in Conflict, Conflict in Identities conference
  • Session 7 (14.11.) Global Social Protection Regimes
  • Group Project: Design a new kind of education, health, pension, or social welfare program that responds to transnational migration
  • Session 8 (5.12.) Conclusion, Migration and Transnationalism in CEE, discussion on draft papers
Literature
  • The transnational studies reader : intersections and innovations. Edited by Sanjeev Khagram - Peggy Levitt. New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2008, xii, 575. ISBN 9780415953733. info
  • BASCH, Linda G., Nina Glick SCHILLER and Cristina SZANTON BLANC. Nations unbound : transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments, and deterritorialized nation-states. London: Routledge, 1994, 344 p. ISBN 2881246303. URL info
Teaching methods
1. Lectures, 2. Class discussions on readings, 3. Group projects in class, 4. Final essay, 5. Written final exam
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2014.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2013, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fss/autumn2013/SOC585E