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. As careful stewards of migrant belongings in the classroom, seminar participants will learn about migratory processes through people’s possessions, and work on foundational questions about proper custodianship of this collection of migrants’ belongings.