This class is about how migration is currently re-shaping American cities, families, suburbs, rural areas, politics, and altering the nation’s racial and cultural dynamics. In response to newcomers, we have seen societal attitudes shift and many of us have begun to re-imagine ourselves as different. This course examines the quasi-permanent presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States and how their presence has confounded much of the established spatial order that has conventionally defined nationhood. Consequently, we also examine the role that national borders play in contemporary immigrants’ lives as they increasingly vie for a place within “a nation of immigrants.”
