LFU:online

The double goal of this seminar is to develop and contextualise some sociological and anthropological discussions around migration, the european unification process, the european border regime and periphery, and to understand the complex incidents and connections at the european borders from an anthropological perspective. On the other hand, the analysis and discussion of empirical case studies shall offer students some tools to reflexively understand macrostructural connections through a sharp attention towards the particular and thus to constitute a fundament for responsible action as social anthropologists and politically mature citizens of Europe.

This anthropological seminar shall discuss and analyse different utopies, discourses, potentials and paradoxies around the European border regime. In fact, the european unification processes inevitably implies new conflicts and realities at and around the external borders that are obviously opposed to the ideals of Europe. Open internal frontiers necessarily imply a displacement and corrobation of external borders.

This seminar focuses both on the contradictory developments inside Central Europe and the paradoxies and conflicts at and around external borders. The seminar therefore gazes at the peripheries and focuses on the everyday praxis of the people living there. The focus lies mainly on empirical case studies from the italian island of Lampedusa, and Calabria. The diverse dynamics show the responsibility of the european countries for what is happening at the periphery (economic crises, joblessness, emigration and immigration movements, militarisation etc.). On a methodological level, the seminar raises the question whether anthropology reaches ist limits at the border and discusses implications and possible options.

Interactive, group work, mind maps, films

Group presentation, writing exercices, final written test

to be announced