SOC 224 - Race and Immigration

Credits: (3)
This undergraduate course provides an introduction to the issues of immigration and race in America. The course examines what it means to be an American and why the criterion for becoming an American has changed throughout U.S. history. We then consider incorporation, the process by which foreign “outsiders” become integrated in their new home. Are immigrants and their children becoming part of the mainstream in their adoptive countries? What is the mainstream? How do sociologists evaluate and theorize immigrant integration? We start with socio-economic integration and then move on to broader questions of membership, belonging and citizenship. We will consider why immigrants were (and are currently) perceived as racial and ethnic “others” and think critically about what it means to be an American in multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural nation.