Borders and Migration Course

Last week I did not have to teach any classes due to Fall Break. Instead I put together my course on borders and migration for next semester. The class will cover labor migration, forced migration and ethnic "return" migration. In particular with regards to labor migration it will deal with illegal Mexican immigration into the US and the integration of immigrants into the European Union. The section on forced migration has readings on Stalin's deportation of the Kalmyks to Siberia, Czechoslovakia's expulsion of its ethnically German citizens after World War II, and the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during 1948. Finally, the last four reading assignments are on ethnically motivated migrations to "ancestral homelands." The four cases covered are ethnic Russian immigrants to the Russian Federation, the return of Crimean Tatars to Crimea, the immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, and the settlement of ethnic Germans from the former USSR, Poland and Romania in Germany. I will put up the syllabus for the course in the next couple of weeks.