93244 - Anthropology of Migration

Learning outcomes

The course places migration in the context of human mobility in general, of the history of colonialism, and of European policy, covering how borders are constructed, the kinds of cultures of humanitarianism that emerge from them, the ethics of migration, hospitality, and the materiality of migration, including ritual aspects of border mortality. The course is taught mainly through the discussion of ethnographic case studies, privileging the point of view of migrants in relation to borders, spatial categories, and their treatment in receiving countries, gendered perspectives on the migration trail and reception, and the dynamics of the informal economy. Students gain critical insight into migration processes, and can develop research and presentation skills.

Readings/Bibliography

1. The Anthropology of Migration Today

- Alonso Bejarano, Carolina, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García and Daniel M. Goldstein, 2019, Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science. Duke University Press. (Intro)

- Gregorič Bon, Nataša, 2017, ‘Movement Matters: The Case of Southern Albania’, Ethnologie française.

- Mannik, Linda, 2016, Migration by Boat: Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion and Survival. Berghahn. (Intro)

- Nasser-Eddin, Nof & Nour Abu-Assab, 2020, ‘Decolonial Perspectives to Refugee Migration’, Migration and Society 3(1).

- Triandafyllidou, Anna, 2020, 'Decentering the Study of Migration Governance: A Radical View', Geopolitics.

- Waterson, Alisse (curated by), 2014, ‘World on the Move: Migration Stories’, Open Anthropology: A Public Journal of the American Anthropological Association 2(3). (Intro and selection of chapters).

2. Mobility as a Way of Life

- Alexiades, Miguel (ed.) 2009, Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives. Berghahn. (Intro)

- Aporta, Claudio & Eric Higgs, 2005, ‘Satellite Culture: Global Positioning Systems, Inuit Wayfinding, and the Need for a New Account of Technology’. Current Anthropology, 46(5): 729-75.

- Politis, Gustavo. 1996. ‘Moving to Produce: Nukak Mobility and Settlement Patterns in Amazonia’. World Archaeology 27(3): 492-511.

- Randall, Sara, 2015, ‘Where have All the Nomads Gone? Fifty Years of Statistical and Demographic Invisibilities of African Mobile Pastoralists’, Pastoralism Research Policy and Practice 5(22).

- Rival, Laura, 2002, Trekking Through History: The Huaorani of Amazonian Ecuador. Columbia University Press. (Chapter 1)

- Ulturgasheva, Olga, 2016, ‘Spirit of the Future: Movement, Kinetic Distribution, and Personhood Among Siberian Eveny’, Social Analysis 60(1).

3. Slavery and Colonialism: Legacies of Empire on Displacement and Forced Migration

- Domingues da Silva, Daniel B. and Philip Misevich (2018) 'Atlantic Slavery and the Slave Trade: History and Historiography', in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History.

- Fellin, Melissa (2013) 'The Historical Impact of Western Colonial and Imperial Policies and Interventions on Conflict and Internal Displacement in Somalia', Journal of Internal Displacement 3(2).

- Murray Li, Tania, 2017, 'Intergenerational Displacement in Indonesia’s Oil Palm Plantation Zone', The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(6): 1158-1176.

- Mustakeem, Sowande, 2017, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex and Sickness in the Middle Passage, University of Illinois Press.

- Oostindie, Gert(2008) 'Migration and Its Legacies in the Dutch Colonial World', in Oostindie, G. (ed.) Dutch Colonialism, Migration and Cultural Heritage, Brill.

- Price, Richard, 2010. ‘Uneasy Neighbors: Maroons and Indians in Suriname’. Tipití 8 (2).

- Singh, Sherry-Ann, 2019, ‘Indian Indentured Laborers in the Caribbean’, in, Ratuva, S. (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity, Palgrave MacMillan.

4. Medicine and Biopolitics at the Border: Quarantine and the Birth of Border Controls

- Bashford, Alison (ed.), 2008, Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present. Palgrave. (Intro)

- Bashford, Alison, 2016, Quarantine: Local and Global Histories, Palgrave, Basingstoke. (Intro)

- Chircop, John and Francisco Javier Martínez, 2020, ‘Introduction -  Mediterranean Quarantine Disclosed: Space, Identity and Power’, in Chircop, John and Francisco Javier Martínez (eds) Mediterranean Quarantines, 1750-1914: Space, Identity and Power. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

- Coker & Ingram, 2008, 'Passports and Pestilence: Migration, Security and Contemporary Border Control of Infectious Diseases', in Basford, A. (ed.) Medicine at the Border.

- Kim, Jeong-Ran (2013) 'The Borderline of ‘Empire’: Japanese Maritime Quarantine in Busan c.1876–1910'. Medical History 57(2).

- Low, Michael Christopher, 2008, ‘Empire, Pilgrims, Plagues and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance, 1865-1908', International Journal of Middle East Studies 40(2), pp. 269-290.

- Ticktin, Miriam, 2017, ‘Introduction: Invasive Pathogens? Rethinking Notions of Otherness’, Social Research: An International Quarterly, special issue on “The Invasive Other” guest ed. Miriam Ticktin, 84 (1), spring 2017: 55-58.

5. Borders and Borderlands

- Andersson, Ruben, 2014, ‘Time and the Migrant Other: European Border Controls and the Temporal Economics of Illegality’. American Anthropologist 116(4): 795-809.

- Avramopulou, Eirini, 2020, 'Decolonizing the Refugee Crisis: Palimpsestous Writing, Being-in-Waiting, and Spaces of Refuge on the Greek Island of Leros', Journal of Modern Greek Studies 38(2).

-  Dijstelbloem, Huub & Lieke Van der Veer, 2019, 'The Multiple Movements of the Humanitarian Border: The Portable Provision of Care and Control at the Aegean Islands', Journal of Borderlands Studies.

- Green, Sarah, 2013, ‘Borders and the Relocation of Europe’, Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 345-361.

- Katz, Irit, 2017, 'Between Bare Life and Everyday Life: Spatializing Europe’s Migrant Camps', AMPS.

- Pelkmans, Mathijs, 2012, ‘Chaos and Order along the (Former) Iron Curtain’, in A Companion to Border Studies (edited by Wilson and Donnan).

- Wihtol de Wenden, Catherine, 2020, ‘Borders and Migrations: The Fundamental Contradictions’, in Ambrosini, Maurizio, Manlio Cinalli, and David Jacobson (eds) Migration, Borders and Citizenship: Between Policy and Public Spheres. Palgrave.

6. Gender and the Migration Trail

- Farfán-Santos, Elizabeth, 2019, 'Undocumented Motherhood: Gender, Maternal Identity, and the Politics of Health Care', Medical Anthropology.

- Fedyuk, Olena, 2020, ‘Moral Economy of Exclusion: Cases of Childbirth on the Margins of Regularity in the EU’, in Nina Sahraoui (ed.), Borders across Healthcare: Moral Economies of Healthcare and Migration in Europe. Oxford & NY: Berghahn.

- Grotti, V., Malakasis, C., Quagliariello, C. et al. 2018, ‘Shifting Vulnerabilities: Gender and Reproductive Care on the Migrant Trail to Europe’. Comparative Migration Studies 6(23).

- Lowe, Lucy, 2019, ‘Refusing Cesarean Sections to Protect Fertile Futures: Somali Refugees, Motherhood, and Precarious Migration’. American Ethnologist 46(2).

- Mai, Nick, 2016, '"Too Much Suffering": Understanding the Interplay Between Migration, Bounded Exploitation and Trafficking Through Nigerian Sex Workers' Experiences'', Sociological Research Online 21(4).

- Saleh, Fadi, 2020, 'Queer/Humanitarian Visibility: The Emergence of the Figure of The Suffering Syrian Gay Refugee', Middle East Critique.

- Speed, Shannon, 2016, ‘States of Violence: Indigenous Women Migrants in the Era of Neoliberal Multicriminalism’ , Critique of Anthropology,

7. Humanitarian Reason and the Ethics of Migration

- Altman, T, 2020, 'Making the State Blush: Humanizing Relations in an Australian NGO Campaign for People Seeking Asylum', Social Analysis, 64(1).

- Andrijasevic, R. and Mai, N., 2016, 'Editorial: Trafficking (in) representations: Understanding the recurring appeal of victimhood and slavery in neoliberal times', Anti-Trafficking Review 7: 1-10.

- Fassin, Didier, 2011, 'Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries: The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times', Annual Review of Anthropology. 

- Ticktin, Miriam, 2014,'Transnational Humanitarianism', Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 273-289.

- Ticktin, Miriam, 2020, 'On Refugees and Innocence', Public Seminar.

- Lucht, Hans, 2010, ‘Violence and Morality: The Concession of Loss in a Ghanaian Fishing Village’, The Journal of Religious Ethics 38(3): 468-78.

- Ilesanmi, Simeon O., 2010, 'A Response to Hans Lucht’s “Violence and Morality: The Concession of Loss in a Ghanaian Fishing Village', The Journal of Religious Ethics 38(3).

8. Hospitality, Cosmopolitanism and Diasporas

- Ben-Yehoyada, Naor, 2015, “‘Follow Me, and I Will Make You Fishers of Men’: The Moral and Political Scales of Migration in the Central Mediterranean.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22 (1): 183–202.

- Carby, Hazel, 2019, Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands, Penguin Books.

- Clerge, Orly, 2019, The New Noir: Race, Identity and Diaspora in Black Suburbia, UCP.

- Figueroa-Vásquez, Yomaira C. 2020, ‘Look! A Whore. A Black Latina in the Field’, https://www.blacklatinasknow.org.

- Grotti, Vanessa & Marc Brightman, 2021, 'Introduction: Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean', in Grotti, V. & M. Brightman (eds) Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean: Encounters with Alterity in Birth and Death. Palgrave.

- Harney, Nicholas, 2020, 'Interculturalism, Inequality and Hospitality in Italy', Ethnos.

- Kehr, Janina, 2018, 'Colonial Hauntings: Migrant Care in a French Hospital', Medical Anthropology.

- Sánchez Gibau, Gina, 2005, 'Contested Identities: Narratives of Race and Ethnicity in the Cape Verdean Diaspora', Identities.

9. Trauma, Materiality and Memorialisation of Migration

- Bachelet, S. & L. Jeffery. 2019. ‘Creative Engagement with Migration in Morocco: An Ethnographic Exploration of Photographic Encounters’. Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 10 (1)

- Dalipaj, Gerda, 2016, ‘A Post-Mortem Journey: Ambiguities of Home and Return Among the Albanian Migrants in Greece", In E. Pistrick (ed.,) Deutsch-Albanische Wissenschaftsbeziehungen hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang. Harrassowitz. Albanische Forschungen, 39. Wiesbaden. pp. 75-90.

- De León, Jason 2012. ‘‘Better To Be Hot Than Caught’: Excavating the Conflicting Roles of Migrant Material Culture.’ American Anthropologist 114(3):477-495.

- Grotti, Vanessa & Marc Brightman, 2021, 'Hosting the Dead: Forensics, Ritual and the Memorialisation of Migrant Human Remains in Italy', in Grotti, V. & M. Brightman (eds) Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean: Encounters with Alterity in Birth and Death. Palgrave.

- Hamilakis, Y. 2017 [2016] Archaeologies of Forced and Undocumented Migration. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3(2): 121-139.

- Langford, Jean, 2018. ‘Gifts intercepted: Biopolitics and Spirit Debt.’ Cultural Anthropology, 24(4), pp. 681–711.

- Soto, Gabriella, 2018, ‘Object Afterlives and the Burden of History: Between “Trash” and “Heritage” in the Steps of Migrants’. American Anthropologist 120(3), pp. 460–473.

LECTURE 10 - Student Presentations & Revision Session.

Teaching methods

The course will be taught through the discussion of ethnographic case studies. The first half of each session will be in the form of a lecture, and the second half in the form of a student-led seminar. Students must read at least three of the texts for each session in advance, and prepare notes and a set of points for discussion. Pairs of students will prepare class presentations, based on wider engagement with course materials and themes, on subjects of their own choice, accompanied by slides, lasting between 8 and 10 minutes, for each seminar. This material will form the basis of an open discussion to delve more deeply into the themes that emerge. During the final session all students will give a second presentation engaging more broadly with different topics across the course.

Assessment methods

Assessment will be through oral examination, during which students must discuss an essay of c. 3000 words, on a theme based on the course, to be agreed with the lecturer (Vanessa Grotti), which they must submit at least one week before the examination. Students should demonstrate initiative and are encouraged to explore readings beyond the course bibliography, and to draw on their own experience, fieldwork etc. The argument of the essay must engage with anthropological theory, and points must be substantiated with ethnographic evidence.Students are also recommended to familiarise themselves with one or two detailed (i.e. book length) ethnographic case studies, which they can use to illustrate ideas discussed during the course. The reading list provided is intended as a guide, and students are urged to explore work published in major anthropology journals, such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Migration and Society, Comparative Migration Studies, and online blogs: https://footnotesblog.com/, https://anthrodendum.org/, https://culanth.org/about, http://fieldworkinitiative.org/.

Office hours

See the website of Vanessa Grotti