San Diego State University
Department of Women's Studies

WS 581-Women's Experience of Migration

Description:
Catalogue description: Gender analysis of the impact of international migration on women’s lives. Identity formation, trauma, language, gender roles and sexuality in the life narratives of immigrant and refugee women. Economic and legal issues affecting immigrant and refugee women in the United States.

More information: This course will focus on the impact of migration on the lives of women immigrants and refugees in the United States and Europe. The course analyzes the impact of intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexual orientation on the experience of migration. The focus of the course will be on discovering the voices and the life experiences of women immigrants/refugees from a variety of cultural backgrounds to understand the diversity and the commonality of the social/political histories that have produced those voices and/or silenced them. Particular emphasis will be placed on the influence of the process of migration in the construction of life narratives for women. This narrative perspective focuses on the role life stories play in the formation of identity, on the cultural conditions that may constrain or facilitate the development of such narratives, and on the effect that critical insight and engagement may have on the transformation of stories and narratives. Stories lived and stories told are influenced by what is culturally acceptable. Not only acceptable behavior but also acceptable accounts of behavior are regulated by society. When societal transformations occur or when the person moves to a different cultural context, the acceptable accounts are also transformed.

In this course, we will incorporate an analysis of gender into our understanding of the impact of migration to the U.S. and other countries by analyzing the experiences of women from diverse backgrounds and cultures. We will incorporate an analysis of the economic, social, political, historical, cultural, racial and psychological forces into the understanding of the lives of women immigrants/refugees.We will look at the effect of migration and acculturation on the stories of women immigrants/refugees and on the liberatory and transformative consequences of old and new stories for the development of women's identity and possible lives.

Texts:
Espín, O.M. (1999). Women crossing boundaries: A psychology of immigration and transformations of sexuality. New York: Routledge.

Kofman, E., Phizacklea, A., Raghuram, P. &Sales, R. (2000). Gender and international migration in Europe. London, UK: Routledge.

Lubhéid, E. (2002). Entry denied: Controlling sexuality at the border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Reader (WS 581) Available at KB Books.