Citizenship, Race, and Immigration

Catalog description

This course examines the intersection of citizenship (defined “as the right to have rights”) with race (defined as processes of racial formation) and the impact of race on the politics and policies of U.S. immigration. The course focuses on the ways in which access to citizenship has historically been a contentious and antagonistic process in which race and racialization have fundamentally shaped immigration politics and policies, excluding and accepting new potential citizens in ways dependent on race. Examining historical records allows us to understand the mediation of race in the provision of access to differentiated forms of entitlement, rights, and obligations. As importantly, these racialized patterns of relationships between ethnic and racial communities, on the one hand, and the state/economy, on the other hand, have been historically fundamental to processes of incorporating immigrant labor into the American workforce. Students will receive credit for either ANT 3126 or SOC 3126, not both. These courses may substitute for each other with the F-replacement option.