Immigrants and Refugees - BA

The Immigrants and Refugees: Borders, Policy, and Community offers students a strong, interdisciplinary foundation for understanding immigration as a social, political, cultural, and economic phenomenon. Students in the Immigrants and Refugees major examine policies, institutions, texts, representations, and social structures to understand multiple dimensions of immigration. Since the major is part of the CRST program, students will also approach immigration from a critical race and ethnicity perspective. The Immigrants and Refugees major is both unique as a major and increasingly relevant. Immigration is one of the most transformative and critical social issues, especially in Minnesota and the Twin Cities. 

Students will have the opportunity to learn about a range of immigration issues through coursework in multiple disciplines, including Sociology, History, Economics, Women’s Studies, Political Science, English, Critical Studies, and more. Students will have a choice of three concentrations, each with a different focus: Race, Class, and Gender; Policy and Government; History, Narratives, and Identities. Each concentration is aimed at different interests and career paths of students. Concentration 1, Race, Class, and Gender, emphasizes the importance of intersections of these social constructs in shaping immigration and immigrants’ lives. Inequality is a major emphasis in this concentration, including the disparate impact of immigration policies on women and immigrants of particular religious/racial/ethnic backgrounds. Concentration 2, Policy and Government, focuses on policies affecting immigrant communities, such as health care, education, and immigration policy itself. Students in this concentration will learn about immigration through policy making at the global, national, and local levels, as well as non-governmental work on immigration issues. Concentration 3, History, Narratives, and Identities is a humanities-focused concentration that emphasizes the narratives, voices, and experiences of immigrants as well as the ways that immigrants and immigration have been represented in popular culture and media.  

The Immigrants and Refugees major will prepare students with multiple disciplinary perspectives and approaches to immigration, which can be applied to careers in many fields, including social and public service, public policy, research through NGOs and government agencies, education, and academic research.

The Immigrants and Refugees major consists of 36 credits. Students complete three required courses, one or two methods courses, and four or five courses in their chosen concentration. Students who opt to take one methods course will take five concentration courses. Students who opt to take two methods courses will take four concentration courses.

Note: Students are advised to check the prerequisites for all courses with an asterisk to the right of the title prior to planning their program of study.

Curriculum

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 Students who take one methods course need to take five theme courses. Students who take two methods courses need to take four theme courses.

Immigrants and Refugees majors satisfy the Writing Requirement for Majors by completing CRST 2050W Foundations of Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity and CRST 4850W Senior Seminar.  They complete the Liberal Arts and Sciences Core Writing Requirement with two other writing-intensive courses (CORE 1000W The Reflective Woman and CORE 3990W Global Search for Justice).