FGSS 3400

Refugees and the Politics of Vulnerability: Intersections of Feminist Theory and Practice

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2018-2019.

Topic Spring 2019: Child Refugees and Politics: Children comprised 52 percent of the worldwide refugee population of 68.5 million in 2017. Traveling with families as well as unaccompanied, they appear in media accounts as the most vulnerable and at risk of all refugees. In this course, we will consider to what degree this assignation of vulnerability, often corresponding with victimhood, shapes the journeys and lives of refugee children. We will use the growing body of feminist scholarship on vulnerability in law, philosophy, migration studies, and other fields to investigate how "vulnerability" creates categories of worthy and unworthy victims. In the U.S., for example, images of babies and toddlers being separated from Central American parents prompted outrage. Yet images of teenage boys in makeshift tents in the New Mexico desert went largely uncovered. At what age does a child no longer deserve sympathy and protection? In what ways does vulnerability overshadow children's agency? How might vulnerability be rearticulated so as to address children's specific needs, at different ages? Our main focus will be Central American and Mexican children crossing into the U.S. at the southern border, but we will make comparisons to other groups throughout the world.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (CA-AS)

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