300055 The Age of Migration (S) (SoSe 2011)

The movement of people across national borders represents one of the most vivid dramas of social reality in the contemporary world. If migrants are the central characters in this drama, there are numerous other dramatic personae whose supporting roles are crucial to determining the ultimate course of events. These include the family and friends left behind in the homeland, government officials and employers in both the sending and receiving countries, other immigrants from the homeland who become part of ethnic communities, sympathetic members of religious and other institutions concerned with assisting newcomers, and people who through either organized or spontaneous means express their hostility toward immigrants.

The lecture course is structured along four main areas: The first section of the lecture course will look at immigration flows from the perspective of the history of the modern world. It will review the most influential theories accounting for immigration. Finally, it will examine contemporary immigration across the globe, focusing on twenty major immigration-receiving nations in the world. The second section turns to incorporation, to the varied ways that immigrants come to be part of a new society. Much of the literature on this topic is laden with preferences, and thus is and ought are often convoluted. An effort will be made to adjudicate the respective theoretical merits of three concepts that have increasingly come to shape discourse on incorporation: assimilation, transnationalism, and multiculturalism. In the third section we turn to the role of states in shaping immigration. For immigration studies during much of the twentieth century, this remained an underdeveloped field. We focus on two recent developments. The first looks at states as key actors in defining and attempting to structure migratory flows and policies regarding incorporation. Next we turn to a discussion of changes in ideas about citizenship, particularly the expansion of dual citizenship around the globe, both as a reality and as something increasingly permitted by states. The fourth and last section of the lecture course focuses on challenges ahead, such as the understanding of migration and development, social inequality and migration, and environmental degradation and human mobility.

Requirements for participation, required level

Diese Lehrveranstaltung richtet sich an BA-Studierende.

Bibliography

Peter Kivisto & Thomas Faist, 2009: Beyond a Border: The Causes and Consequences of Contemporary Immigration. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.