Course Description
For centuries, men and women have crossed the globe to labor in foreign agriculture and industry. But women have also migrated to become domestics, nurses, mail order brides, and sex workers. As such, gender has shaped both the opportunities and forms of exploitation that immigrants have faced. This course explores the role of gender in the lived experience of migrant families, workplaces, and communities since the early nineteenth century. How has gender shaped migrants’ experiences, perceptions, and integration into their host countries? How does it influence transnational practices and national immigration policies?

We will consider these questions by studying immigration (mainly to the Americas) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then across the globe during the past fifty years. The class will examine a broad range of racial/ethnic groups, while also focusing on certain categories of migrants—domestic workers, war brides, international adoptees, care providers, sex workers—in order to understand the role of gender, race, class, and sexuality in migration. We will use film and other multimedia sources to provide access to a range of immigrant voices and experiences.

Course Requirements and Expectations
Attendance and active participation in discussion and class activities are essential to this class (20% of your grade). There are also two written assignments: a 5-page midterm paper analyzing the gender dynamics of two different historical episodes of migration (30% of your grade), and an 8-page final paper based on your reading of an immigrant biography or autobiography (40% of your grade). There will also be a required oral presentation of your final biography project at the end of the semester (10 points).

Learning Outcomes
• Identify historical and contemporary factors that contribute to global migration and understand how gender (as well as race, class, and sexuality) shape these processes.
• Develop an understanding of how national immigration laws and international migration agreements can affect gendered migration.
• Develop good reading, comprehension, and speaking skills in English to enable the effective communication of ideas.
• For paper assignments, students should be able to analyze and compare different migrant groups, and critically read and analyze a primary source (autobiography).

Selected Readings
A complete list of readings will be available on the e-learning platform, but here are some examples:

Patricia R. Pessar and Sarah J. Mahler, “Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender In,” International Migration Review, Vol. 37: 3 (Fall 2003): 812-831.

Rose Cohen, Out of the Shadow, A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side (1918; reprinted by Cornell University Press; 1995).

Jane Freedman, “Sex and Gender-based Violence against Refugee Women,” Reproductive Health Matters, 24:47 (May 2016): 18-26.

Julio Capo, “Queering Mariel: Mediating Cold War Foreign and US Citizenship Among Cuba’s Homosexual Exile Community, 1978-1994,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 29: 4 (Summer 2010): 78-106.

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, Metropolitan Books, 2002.

Nicole Constable, “Feminism and Myths of Mail Order Marriages,” in Romance on a Global Stage (University of California Press, 2003), 63-90.