Latin American Migration & the American Dream

The United States is a nation of immigrants that enjoys the most unsustainable rates of consumption on the planet. In this course we will focus on migration streams from Latin America, the social forces that create them, and their contribution to the increasing diversity and inequality of U.S. society. We will apply ethnographic research to debates over the southern borderlands, remittance economies in Mesoamérica and the Caribbean, low-wage labor markets in the U.S., and U.S. immigration policies. We will also compare Latin American immigration with other migration streams to Europe and the Mideast. (This course is not open to students who have taken FYSE 1287 or SOAN 0329).