COURSE DETAIL
This course focuses on how collective action and social movements have sought to raise awareness and effect change in migration and identity issues. The course is designed to engage students in a multi-disciplinary, experiential research project on migration issues through a series of set themes related to collective action. It aims to better understand the forms of collective action on the on the issues of migration, based on the in-depth study of the Paris experience. It critically addresses concepts of integration, community, ethnicity, citizenship, asylum, and migrant rights by systematically putting them to the test through social and political mobilizations. As such, it will allow students to explore migrants’ diverse experiences as they interact with societies, culture, and institutions with a strong emphasis on the role played by activism. Given the predominance of migration in the nation’s capital city, a wide range of opportunities for case studies to develop research projects, crossing various disciplines such as history, political science, sociology, literature, journalism, and visual studies on social movements about migrants, migration and identity, and migration in Paris. The Parisian field offers myriad case studies on these issues as the undocumented migrants’ social movements, associations for the defense of migrants’ rights, aid and support institutions for foreigners, as well as organizations created by communities of origin. This is why, by focusing on the research dimension, this course intends to rely on, from a pedagogical perspective, meetings with social actors and collection of first-hand data. Research papers deal with collective action motivated by positions and identities related to migration, ethnicity, religion, anti-racism, nationalism, and diversity. The focus on migration and identity in an historical perspective is particularly relevant to developing research skills and service-learning opportunities for students.