Professor: Tobin Hansen
4 credits
Students in this class will analyze human migrations, restrictive migration policies, coercive immigration enforcement, and the implications of migration on national belonging. The class also explores the nature and meanings of human-object relationships, and particularly the possessions migrants carry and have confiscated near the U.S.-Mexico border by U.S. immigration agents. These objects—cell phones, wallets, government-issued identification, jewelry, keys, books, rosaries, photographs, prayer cards—are intimate, personal, or practical and illuminate migrants’ experiences. Students will pursue the return of approximately 400 migrants’ unclaimed belongings that are currently housed at the University of Oregon. Despite U.S. agents’ responsibility to return people their belongings, of the 400,000 people released from federal custody annually, as many as one-third have property lost, misplaced, or stolen.
In this seminar students will learn about migrations broadly, and especially in the context of 19th, 20th, and 21st century industrialization in and around the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and the governmental policies that seek to manage human movements. Moreover, they will further the work of The Property Recovery Assistance Project, collaborating to attempt communication with the rightful owners of the property. In the course of learning about migratory processes through people’s possessions, seminar participants will serve as stewards of migrant belongings in the classroom and be expected to treat the objects and communications with care and thoughtfulness.
This course will challenge students’ complex problem-solving and flexible-thinking skills and may elicit strong emotional responses. Despite hopes to return migrants’ belongings, these are cold cases that date from 2008 to 2023. The class’s creative collaboration, work, and multi-step plans to communicate with the proper owners of belongings may not result in successful connection and return and, therefore, cause frustration. Students will be challenged to work through topics of social suffering, hardship, and justice in dealing with foundational questions about migrant experiences and proper custodianship of this collection of migrants’ belongings.