Syllabus
For a detailed syllabus for Summer semester 2024 please see https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=3980
Part I: INTRODUCTION
Week 1
Introduction to the course
Week 2
Migration crisis on external EU borders
Week 3
Crisis on the PL - BY border
Week 4
Seminar I: Reflextion of the migration crisis in public and media discourse
Part II: MIGRATION
Week 5
Migration: basic concepts in historical perspective.
How migration is studied. Approaches to the study of migration until the 1960s, motivation to study migration, study of migration from the perspective of various social and natural science
Week 6
Contemporary theoretical approaches to migration. Migration theories: individual authors, schools
The lecture discusses individual cases, which include individual migration theories.
(Zdeněk Uherek)
Supporting learning materials for distance learning
§ video / podcast
§ Prezi / PowerPoint presentation
§ test
Week 7
World Migration Streams and Trends. Transnationalism; Concept of Stimmung
The lecture discusses the issue of migration flows and related integration strategies.
(Zdeněk Uherek)
Supporting learning materials for distance learning
§ video / podcast
§ Prezi / PowerPoint presentation
§ test
Week 8
Seminar II: Discussion on the topic of lectures from weeks 5 - 7
(Zdeněk Uherek) 2. intermediate test
Part III: BORDERS
Week 9
Anthropology of borders. Bordering - ordering - othering. Fortification of Europe and surveillance
(Jakub Grygar)
Required readings
DONNAN, HASTINGS; WILSON, THOMAS M. 1998. ‚Nation, state and identity at international borders‘ in Border Identities. Nation and State at International Frontiers. Donnan, Hastings; Wilson, Thomas M. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-41.
Required podcasts
Borders. BBC 4: Thinking AllowedWalls. BBC 4: Thinking Allowed
Required documentary film
The Border Fence (dir. Nikolaus Geyrhauter, 2018)
Synopsis: In October 2006, the United States government decided to build a 700 mile fence along its Mexican border. Three years and 3.1 billion dollars later, award-winning director Rory Kennedy investigates the impact of the project, revealing how its stated goals--containing illegal immigration, cracking down on drug trafficking, and protecting America from terrorists--have given way to unforeseen consequences.
Recommended learning resources
BOURDIEU, PIERRE. 1991. Identity and representation. Elements for a critical reflection on the idea of region. In: Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
CHAVEZ, Leo R. 2006. Spectacle in the Desert. The Minuteman Project on the U.S-Mexico Border.
FARMAN, Abou. (2017) The Political Aesthetics of Border Walls, Anthropology Now, 9:3, 3-5.
GUPTA, Akhil – FERGUSON, James. 1992. Beyond „Culture“: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1): 6-23.
Supporting learning materials for distance learning
§ video and podcast
§ Prezi / PowerPoint presentation
§ test
Assignment
A. Listen to the first 15 minutes of the podcast Borders from BBC 4 Thinking allowed series (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dgyp) and answer the questions:
What is the difference between borders and frontiers?
How do you understand the statement on the holy trinity of people - state - and territory?
Is the borderless world a utopia or dystopia? Why?
B. Watch the video on Wagah Attari border closing ceremony (). Find more information about the ceremony and explain what we can observe in the video clip. From your answer should be evident you have read required reading for today's lecture (DONNAN, HASTINGS; WILSON, THOMAS M. 1998. ‚Nation, state and identity at international borders‘, in Border Identities. Nation and State at International Frontiers. Donnan, Hastings; Wilson, Thomas M. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-41).
Team-work for 3-4 students.
The scope of the work (A+B): 1000 words max.
Deadline: xxx
Watch the documentary and answer following questions: 1. What are the motivations of the social actors in the dispute with the Brennerpass / Passo del Brenner fence? 2. Some sociologists (Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certau, James Scott) distinguish between "strategy" and "tactics". Find more information about these terms and explain, where we can see these concepts in practices depicted in the documentary. 3. Give 3 examples of politics and rituals performing power control at the Austrian-Italian border.
Week 10
Easter Monday, no class
Week 11
Borders and body politics. Crossing external EU border. Surveillance
(Jakub Grygar)
Required reading
ADEY, PETER. 2009. Facing airport security: affects, biopolitics, and the preemptive securisation of the mobile body. Environment and Planing D: Society and Space (27): 274-295.
ANDERSSON, RUBEN. 2014. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine migration and the business of bordering Europe. University of California Press. Pp. 137 -176.
Required podcasts
Surveillance. BBC 4: Thinking Allowed.
Biometric Security: Ethnographer´s dilemma. BBC 4: Thinking Allowed.
Recommended learning resources
BIERMANN, URSULA. 2002. Performing the Border: On Gender, Transnational Bodies and Technology. Globalization on the Line. Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (eds.) Palgrave.
BIGO, DIDIER; GUILD, ELSEPTH. 2005. Controlling Frontiers: Free Movement Into And Within Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate. Pp. 49-100. (Please note, this is ".djvu" file, for reading it you have to install a DJVU browser to your computer.)
FOLLIS, S. Karolina. Vision and Transterritory: The Borders of Europe. Science, Technology, & Human Values. XX(X): 1-28.
LOW, Setha M. (2016) Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place. New York and London: Routledge.LYON, David.. 2017. The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life. Wiley: London.
Week 12
Local communities and the state. Power and resistance. Loyalty and illegality
(Jakub Grygar)
Required reading
DE GENEVA, NICHOLAS. 2002. Migrant “Illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology (31): 419-447.
Required podcast
Required video
Recommended learning resources
ANTONOPOULOS, GEORGIOS, A. 2008. The Greek Connection(s). The social organizationof the cigarette-smuggling business in Greece. European Journal of Criminology 5(3): 263-288.
GLENNY, MISHA. 2008. McMafia. A Crime Without Frontiers. NY: Vintage House.
Documentary
Niggers / Niguri (2009, dir. Antonio Martino)
The small Calabrian village of Sant'Anna is "invaded" by the "Nìguri" (Blacks in Calabrian dialect). There is a center that is one of the greatest place of reception of immingrants of Europe, that reflects what happens in Italy: fear of the differences, distrust and the doubt of how to welcome the clandestine immigrants that reach our coasts. The people of Calabria, historically defined emigrant, accept unwillingly the cohabitation with the new arrivals, that attend for a long time, and often in vain, a document to be able to live in Italy and that they will very probably live in places like Rosarno, working as slaves.
Week 13
Seminar III: Power and resistance at the EU border
(Jakub Grygar) 3. intermediate test
Annotation
The course provides a survey of main ideas underlying debates on international borders, cross-border migration, and politics of national/state belonging and control thereof. This course will consider the border politics involved in the making of state power, migrant strategies, and local and (trans) national communities based on assigned weekly reading.
Using the EU/non-EU border as our primary loci of inquiry, we will explore the rights and reception of those who cross borders: not only geopolitical, but also linguistic, racial, economic, and cultural. Examining immigration policy and admissions policy, law enforcement along the border, media representations of migrants, and stories of border crossers, we will attempt to understand the forces that expand and constrain membership rights in these intersecting communities.
How are borders constructed and contested by groups on both sides of the border? How are rights of belonging and membership transformed by migrants and “trespassers”? Border politics will be considered from an anthropological perspective allowing us to consider a wide variety of scholarly work in fiction and non-fiction, contemporary media, and border studies.