The purpose of this seminar is to study the politics of Latino migrations and the geopolitics of asylum practices in the United States and in Latin America. Students will gain knowledge on Latinos, migration, and asylum through both the lens of global political economy, critical race theory and neo-Gramscian theory and through practical engagement with refugee and migrant organizations/legal practitioners. The course will focus on asylum policies and practices from the 1980s to the present and will draw upon case studies based on asylum seekers from Mexico, Central America, and the Dominican Republic among other migrant sending regions. There will be an emphasis on how groups with competing interests and visions struggle to conserve or transform the contemporary asylum regime in a transnational model of society and economy between the United States and Latin America. Finally the seminar will also consider the relationship between asylum and the growth of detention practices and explore the efforts of refugees and legal practitioners to challenge and reform the contemporary asylum regime.
This class is cross-listed with LAS 384L #39790. LAS is the home department.