European Identity Seminar:
Multicultural Europe? (PSC 400.2)
The travel seminar explores the economic, social, and
political consequences of post-Word War II
immigration
to Western
European countries. While
European nations took
unprecedented steps of economic and political integration
during the 1950s and 1960s,
active
recruitment
programs led to the migration of foreign
workers from Southern to Northern Europe. At the
same time, many migrants came to Europe from former colonies (e.g., from
Indonesia, the Maghreb region, India, and Suriname). Another wave of
migration during the 1980s and 1990s brought family members and migrants
seeking asylum and refuge from political oppression and economic hardship.
Today,
Europe has been transformed by the presence of those workers
and migrants, their
families, and descendants. Widespread
xenophobic responses to those demographic trends
have challenged multicultural ideas and the presence of immigrants
has led to a reinvigorated debate on what it means to be 'German, '
'Belgian,' ‘French,’ or ‘Dutch.’
This seminar puts those recent trends in labor migration
in the context of a history of
population movements
across Europe.
The seminar will focus on two core
questions:
1.
How and why do
political and social responses to
immigration vary
across the four visited countries?
2. How do models of integration vary
across the visited nations? What cultural, social, and economic factors
shape the trajectory of integration processes for first, second, and third
generation immigrants?
Required
reading: Travel Reader 'PSC 400.2, Multicultural Europe?, Spring 2009'
Suggested reading:
Buruma, Ian (2006) Murder in Amsterdam. The Death of Theo van Gogh and
the Limits of
Tolerance, Penguin Press.