230518 Theorizing Migrant Knowledges: Postcolonial Perspectives, Decolonial Approaches, Border Thinking (S) (SoSe 2022)

Migration is usually held to be a rather recent phenomenon, starting in the 20th (or, the earliest, the 19th) century. Conversely, a look at the history of the Americas shows that enforced and chosen forms of migration(s) have shaped American societies and cultures at least for the last 500 years. Respectively, through the entanglements created through processes of mobility and border crossings, close interconnections and unequal interdependencies were simultaneously created with and inside European, African and other spaces and also shaped these societies. The seminar on the one hand focuses on the forms of knowledge that were created through these migrations such as travel narratives, slave narratives, testimonies, musical forms or, more recently, blogs such as those by the "Dreamers" in the US, focusing on the ways which experiences and representations are presented in these texts and practices. We will also discuss current phenomena related to migrant knowledge such as global care chains, parenthood across borders, remittances, (sex/'romance') tourism, citizenship and global inequalities or border regimes. On the other hand, we discuss theorizations that have focused on including particularly non-hegemonic forms of knowledge production and circulation such as postcolonial theory and decolonial thinking, border thinking and critical diaspora approaches.