POLS 353 Theorizing Membership and Migration
Increasingly people are on the move, but not on equal terms. In this class, we will approach contemporary regimes of movement normatively and critically. While our investigations are anchored in political theory, we will draw from other social sciences and read studies ranging from that of ancient Greeks to those about contemporary Tibetans.
The first half of the course centers on questions of membership. We will examine the meaning of citizenship, probe into the various membership categories beyond that of citizenship, interrogate the acquisition rules of these membership categories, and question how rights and obligations are distributed across these categories. We will also explore the possibilities of going beyond the nation state, as promised by the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship.
The second half of the course turns to migration. We will study the debates over whether people should be allowed to migrate across state borders and, relatedly, on what grounds could the state justify their control over borders. We will then attend to the meanings and politics of the categorization of migrants (refugees, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, economic migrants etc.). Finally, we will ask what rights and obligations migrants have in relation to their home, host, and diasporic communities.