L&S Curricular Connections

We will examine the big idea of migration in the contemporary world through three major themes and various related case studies of human migration in the long twentieth and into the twenty first centuries. These themes include 1) past and present immigration to California and beyond, 2) the impact of immigration in relation to labor, health and the environment, and 3) contemporary immigrant activism and organizing. The major questions the course will address include the following: Who migrates and why? Where do migrants go, and why have various transnational labor migrations emerged between specific countries? What are the social, economic, political, and environmental impacts of migration for the sending and receiving countries? How have migrants, immigrants and refugees been received in different places and times? How have they historically and how are they currently responding to changes in immigration policy and public attitudes, including rising anti-immigrant sentiment? And how might UC Berkeley students respond to immigration in the contemporary world, including in the state of California?