Migration And Multiculturalism

AY2016/2017 Semester 1

This course is designed to introduce contemporary forms of migration and their implications for living within diverse and multicultural societies through sociological concepts and key perspectives. This course will give students a broad understanding of the central issues associated with migration and settlement, with an attempt to focus on south-south migrations and generate conversation with more commonly studied South to North movements of people. The first half of the course will address various types of migration and key transnational framings of the movements of people across domestic and international boundaries. In the second half, the ways in which various states deal with the diversity of their temporary and more permanent immigrant populations will be explored. This is done using a case study approach that allows for a deeper understanding of each site. Finally, the course introduces some elements of everyday migrant life in order to provide a balance to highly state-centric readings of migration. The course seeks to link issues of migration with understandings of contemporary multiculturalism so that they can be examined as interrelated transnational phenomena. In these discussions, class and ethnicity emerge as key vectors of differentiation and analysis.