Blockseminar Migration Nationalism and Citizenship

Migration, particularly its potential to challenge older forms of national belonging and reconfigure citizenship has become a heated policy debate in different countries around the world. Hence, issues of nationalism and citizenship as they relate to migration are at the center of key debates in the social sciences. Migrant-sending and migrant-receiving states efforts to encourage or deter migration are part of broader nation- and state-building projects that draw on as well as give political, economic, and cultural significance to the discourse of nationalism. Meanwhile, migrants efforts to assert themselves within their new contexts are reshaping conventional understanding of rights, citizenship, and belonging. The multiple, contradictory and contested ties between migrant-subjects and states will be of central concern in this course. Students will be provided with a brief theoretical overview the concepts of migration, nationalism and citizenship. Students will interrogate, for instance, how and why people move, the historical rise of nations and nationalism and the notions of rights, privileges, obligations attached to modern citizenship. The remainder of the course will then shift to an examination of how the nationalism and citizenship are challenged by processes of migration. Some of the questions that will be addressed will include, what role, if any, does nationalism play in shaping immigration policy in the immigrant-receiving countries? How do notions of ethnic or racial differences shape nationalist claims? How are migrant-sending states reconfiguring citizenship with increasing emigration? To what extent do migrants engage in transnational political practices? How are transnational ties and migrants new political participation reconfiguring state and subject relations in the migrant-sending countries? What is the future of nationalism and state-based claims efforts to shape migration and definitions of citizenship? Examples of the readings the course will cover include: 1) Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2007. Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States. Ithaca, Cornell University Press. 2) Jacobson, David. 1997. Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 3) Koopmans, Ruud. 2005. Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press. Migration, nationalism and citizenship are gendered, racialized and classed phenomena hence many of the readings for the course will incorporate an intersectional framework. Bemerkung This seminar has 3 ECTS (!). It will take place as a bloc seminar in early June 2009. Please contact ma-gpe@uni-kassel.de for the exact dates (they will also be announced by posters and online on http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/globalization/) and for obtaining the syllabus and information on the readings prior to the seminar. FB 05 Gesellschaftswissenschaften Uni Kassel SS 2009 Global Political Economy Erziehungswissenschaften Prof. Dr. Rodriguez Robyn