Overview

Mediterranean Migration Mosaic Spring 2013

The Mediterranean has witnessed the circulation of ideas, people, and goods between Northern Africa and Southern Europe across the centuries. Both during times of conflict and cooperation, colonization, religious expansion, and human migrations have shaped the lives of individuals and the history of cultures. Current migrations and conditions associated with globalization date back to the centuries of contact that began with the Berber and Arabic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th Century and continue with the colonial and post-colonial realities of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Mediterranean Mosaic will focus on migrations between Morocco, France and Spain, exploring the multiple and interacting identities embodied by individuals, communities, regions, and the nation-state. We will examine the creation of transnational communities, ethnic and religious tensions and cooperation, philosophical orientations to diversity, and social policy.

Sustainability, broadly conceived, will be another important component. We will explore cultural sustainability (the ways in which migrant and immigrant communities maintain their dynamic culture even as they adapt to their new transnational reality); and economic and environmental sustainability (how the state, employers, and workers negotiate economic and environmental costs and benefits related to productivity, labor, and health of humans and the environment).

Multi-lingual research teams will explore these dynamic interactions, with a focus on labor and family migrations. Through oral histories, ethnographic, and survey research we will begin to trace migration patterns; the contexts and conditions of both sending and receiving communities; the journeys and life experiences of (im)migrants; and community building and reception. Debates over social policy, national identity, religious diversity, and collective memory will inform our discussions.

This full semester Mosaic will involve 4 courses to be taken by all Mosaic students:

HIST 215 /SOC 230 Mediterranean Migrations
1 credit course cross-listed in History and Sociology will focus on the development of migratory flows between Morocco and southern Europe in the context of trans-Mediterranean migration history. In addition, the course will place migration from Morocco within the larger historical contacts between Europe and Morocco—including colonialism and its aftermath—and it will consider the impact of larger socioeconomic and political changes on geographic mobility across the Mediterranean. The course will address the interplay of structural socioeconomic and political factors with individual trajectories of migrant men and women, and the impact they have on families and communities. FLIC option: Spanish

HIST215/ SOC 240 or 340 depending on students’ previous coursework Qualitative Research Methods will introduce students to ethnographic research methods, interviewing, oral history, mapping, demographic, and archival research. Students will be actively engaged in all phases of the research process from research design to data collection, analysis, and presentation. FLIC option: Spanish.

SOC 230 Representations of (Im)migrants: 1 credit course co-taught by Borges, Rose, and Toux, with guest speakers in situ. This course will focus on the ways in which 1) (im)migrants are represented in various cultural contexts through film, the arts, and the media; and 2) individual (im)migrants and collectivities represent themselves. We will explore how (im)migrants and receiving societies negotiate demographic, religious, and cultural changes as well as changing conceptions of identity at individual, collective, and national levels. We will examine topics such as: accommodation and resistance; inclusion and exclusion; gender and generational dynamics; globalization and identities in flux; art and politics; borders and border-crossings; and nativism. (Elective for film studies? comp civ, WR) FLIC option: Spanish or French.

HIST/SOC 500 Independent Research/Study 500 level with either Borges and Rose.

The first 4-5 weeks will take place on campus, and then the Mosaic research team will fly to begin the month-long global component in Toulouse, Morocco, and Malaga. We then will return to campus to process and analyze our data during the last 5-6 weeks of class. Students may be able to receive credit in other departments (Africana Studies, Anthropology, International Studies, Middle East Studies, Women and Gender Studies) depending on their projects and in consultation with their advisor. See integrated syllabus and calendar, also posted and updated on moodle.