SOSA 3215

This course explores the inter-relating of migration and identity under conditions that are now described as globalization. Migrants become immigrants in particular places. Most depart as citizens of one country seeking temporary refuge, employment, or new citizenship at their destination. As they travel, migrants negotiate the multiple (sometimes competing) demands of kin, employers, and policies set by more than one state. Because commitments and obligations they experience straddle the borders they have crossed, migrants lives are transnational. Their ideas of “home” and identity are also reworked as they travel and can be conflicted as their circumstances change. Some writers have concluded contemporary migration is both turbulent and chaotic compared with historical examples. This course begins with review of some historical migration examples and critically reviews how these differ from current globalization flows. However, the main focus is on particular instances of migration as described in ethnographic and sociological case studies. Some key concepts to be discusses in the course are diaspora, transnationalism, and ethnoscape. Approved with International Development Studies.