In Arizona immigration is controversial—how about in the rest of the world?
In this undergraduate course we study global migration from current social science perspectives to learn how Arizona’s migration issues fit into this larger context. Explore global migration & culture embedded in a transnational field of social, economic, and political relations. Map the impact of migration as the effect of global restructuring of capital and culture. Study grounded in empirical research about migrants' lives, struggles, identities in migrant-receiving and sending countries worldwide.
A full-day excursion on April 1st brought to life our study of migration. We walked on migrant trails in the Arizona desert; interviewed migrants to learn their stories at Mexico’s border patrol Grupos Beta; ate lunch with a family at their home in an informal settlement colonia; walked along the border fence and to the memorial for Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez; spoke with Jesuit priests who work with migrants at the Kino Border Initiative; visited a community center that provides services to make border life more sustainable in Mexico; held discussions about migration and globalization. The fieldtrip was safely guided by staff of BorderLinks, a Tucson educational nonprofit.
Follow the Migrant
Recent news on transnational migration
An interview is like taking a fieldtrip into someone else’s story. For the final assignment each student
interviewed an immigrant or refugee and created a web-based project to tell their story. Our project draws inspiration from Crossing the BLVD: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America by Warren Lehrer & Judith Sloan (2003). The book
presents fascinating interviews with immigrants and refugees in Queens, a borough of New York City.
We take metropolitan Phoenix as our study site, an urban and transnational social landscape increasingly rich with “strangers, neighbors, aliens,” whose migration stories are every bit as intriguing as migrants in Queens. Building from the interdisciplinary social science approaches and perspectives on im/migration patterns and processes of our course, we look for migration stories “in the shadows between the superstores,” where we find the global has moved right in to our local communities. In conducting close-to-home expeditions, each student’s interview contributes to a collaborative, synergistic, whole picture of local migration that is more rich and complex than its separate parts. In Crossing the Valley, we cross the globe.
© 2015 Kristin Koptiuch. Please give credit to authors when citing. Viewpoints expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the professor or ASU.
Associate Professor of Anthropology
School of Social & Behavioral Sciences
New College of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences,
Arizona State
University, Phoenix