Using a Decolonial Humanistic Sociological Lens to Teach Global Migration: The Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment

Abstract

Conversations surrounding decolonial humanistic sociology have been guided by a moral imperative—to advance a radical critique of society for the purpose of reducing inequality. Storytelling has been used by marginalized groups to advance decolonization. Exactly how can instructors use the power of storytelling and maps to facilitate the study of migration among students? We argue that narratives, maps, and museum-like exhibitions can be used to teach human migration in a way that moves beyond the dominant approach of push-pull nation-centered demography. This contribution describes how decolonial humanistic sociology informed the development of the Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment: a hands-on learning experience focused on translating students’ learning into action. We outline learning outcomes, review a sample of students’ work, and consider the limitations of the assignment. We also consider the hostile responses those who use the assignment may face and discuss the peril this poses to academic freedom and democracy.

Keywords

migration storytelling mapmaking methodological nationalism decolonization

In the last decade, a growing tension has developed between efforts to incorporate the study of social inequality and antagonistic interests that seek to censor this approach in U.S. school settings. The significant growth of these censorship movements and their political clout pose a concern for educators and democratic institutions. In the face of this growing backlash, humanistic sociology—which is concerned with addressing inequality—is also under threat.

Humanistic sociology leverages the interdisciplinary arts and sciences to address forms of inequality through praxis. Jipson (2002:74) boldly argued that humanistic sociology “must become part of a critical interventionism that attacks social forms of oppression inside and outside of the classroom.” The rise of anti-democratic censorship campaigns emphasizes the ongoing relevancy of Jipson’s statement and the need to join a larger conversation on how to advance a critical interventionist approach to humanistic sociology. Our shared expertise as migration scholars (Gil-García and Sati) and as former students in the classroom (Sati, Velazquez, and Martin) guides our discussion on how professors can employ humanistic methods to decolonize the field.

Our proposal to decolonize the field of migration studies allows for imaginative thinking about ways to teach human migration that move beyond the dominant push-pull nation-centered demography toward a demographic approach that includes the use of narratives, maps, and museum-like exhibitions. We identify the key theoretical and methodological frameworks used to inform the development of the Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment: a hands-on learning experience focused on translating students’ learning into action. We show how teaching global migration in this way aligns with Jipson’s call for an interventionist approach to humanistic sociology, which can serve as a bulwark against censorship movements that threaten educational freedom.

The article begins by describing an ongoing conversation in the field of migration studies that seeks to determine the place of postcolonial, race, and gender theories in shaping the empirical object(s) of research. Much of this scholarly conversation has revolved around the disproportionate role of the nation-state in the determination of relevant topics worthy of study. Next, we describe the learning context, including the focal subject matter, the students, and the course materials. We then discuss the pedagogy used and how this enabled the inclusion of the social sciences, cartography, and creative writing in the making of the Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment. We outline learning outcomes, review samples of students’ work, and consider the limitations of the assignment. In closing, we note that those who use the assignment may face hostile responses, and we discuss the peril this poses to academic autonomy and democracy.

Theoretical Debate

The early twenty-first century has been marked by anti-immigration discourses and policies, such as heightened immigration restrictions including deportations, detentions, family separations, travel bans, and suspension or denial of visa and refugee applications. In affluent countries, these policies are increasingly couched in national security discourse, which is strategically deployed to justify the criminalization of mostly non-White migrant noncitizens (Ewing, Martínez, and Rumbaut 2015). Because climate change will exacerbate inequality and global migration, there is an urgent need to identify classroom strategies that maximize student engagement with social justice ideals (Forman and Ramanathan 2019; UNICEF 2021).

Student knowledge on the topic of migration is largely shaped by public discourse, which often centers on putative differences between migrants and citizens. Similarly, scholarship on the broad topic of migration has frequently privileged the nation-state as a static and primary measure of analysis that distinguishes insiders (citizens) from outsiders (noncitizens; Massey 2007; Waldinger 2015). Scholars of migration, perhaps unintentionally, tend to reproduce and reinforce these assumptions as they operate within the parameters of methodological nationalism—the assumption that the nation-state is a natural social and political form of the modern world (Wimmer and Schiller 2003).

Methodological nationalism informs the dominant binary push-pull model that frames human mobility as a linear process in which migrants flee from poverty and violence, moving from resource-poor settings to resource-rich ones. Assimilation theory grew out of this linear framework, focusing on changes that occur among arrivals in the strength of their home country ties and their incorporation into the receiving state (Alba and Nee 1999). Later theories, however, noted that noncitizenship status among arrivals can result in forms of racial exclusion that incorporate segmentation into assimilation processes (Portes, Fernandez-Kelly, and Haller 2005). Furthermore, transnational theory, which focuses on the ongoing economic, social, political, and cultural ties of migrant populations across national geographies, challenges assimilation frameworks to consider the cross-border ties of state and nonstate actors in the regulation of these groups (Levitt, DeWind, and Vertovec 2003; Schiller 2009; Waldinger 2015; Wimmer and Schiller 2002). Both assimilation and transnational perspectives often overlook the power of the state to rule throughout a territory (territorial sovereignty), which normalizes and reinforces methodological nationalism.

Western epistemologies underlie settler-colonial and postcolonial forms of governance, which have been foundational to the myth of territorial sovereignty (Glenn 2015; Pulido 2018; Sharma 2020; Speed 2019). These forms of rule emerged alongside the development of liberal notions of liberty, which did not apply to those who experienced genocide, colonization, enslavement, and indenture (Lowe 2015). Importantly, these forms of rule shaped the modern racialized global division of labor and what Malkki (1995) called the “national order of things.”

The persistence of global inequality has prompted scholars such as Go (2013:39–41) to propose the use of a postcolonial lens that welcomes the voices and forms of knowledge of marginalized groups and “the relations between non-Western or southern societies and other spaces . . . in the making and remaking of modernity.”¹ A postcolonial perspective in the field of migration studies moves away from individualistic and economically deterministic perspectives, instead centering a relational analysis of four key social systems—the state, capitalism, militarism, and the use of culture—to critique the factors that produce global inequality and human mobility (Espiritu 2014; Golash-Boza, Duenas, and Xiong 2019). However, as Sharma (2020:13) argued, postcolonialism is also a “contemporary mode of governmentality of ruling relations” that involves “normalizing nation-states as self-determinative.” The nation-state, as the preeminent sovereign, is granted the authority to produce what Sharma (2020:6) called “national-natives” (citizens) but also subaltern noncitizen subjects who are perceived as “out of place.”

Because postcolonialism is both a scholarly tradition and a form of governmentality, we build on this rich scholarly tradition and propose a “decolonial humanistic sociology” that challenges postcolonial forms of governance. Today, the international system of nation-states shapes the global political dynamics of postcolonial rule, enabling nation-states to construct migrant “illegality” and forms of noncitizenship as social problems that require policy interventions (De Genova 2002; Sharma 2020). According to Collins (2022), decolonization involves a praxis-based commitment to nurturing epistemological perspectives that upend postcolonial forms of governance. A decolonial humanistic sociology, therefore, aims to dismantle the postcolonial forms of migration governance implicated in the dehumanization of migrants and erasure of first peoples (Riva 2022; Saldaña-Portillo 2017).

Scholars and practitioners have engaged in a deeper historical study of the factors that have delimited the scope of the human and may unwittingly restrict the radical reach of humanistic sociology (Saghaye-Biria 2018; Shetty 2018). Indeed, Saghaye-Biria (2018) and Shetty (2018) illustrated how Enlightenment-era ideas and the creation of a human rights regime emerged from colonial projects. This scholarship has led to a call for the decolonization of human rights (Shetty 2018).² Decolonial humanistic sociology is guided by a moral imperative to advance a radical critique of society for the purpose of tackling inequality and a nonpositivist interdisciplinary approach to the production of knowledge (Du Bois and Wright 2002; Goodwin and Scimeca 2010).

Storytelling has proved a fruitful approach for marginalized groups seeking to apply nonpositivist interdisciplinary insights for the purpose of advancing decolonization. For example, storytelling has been used to narrate everyday modes of resistance used by those who are often the targets of harmful ideologies and institutions that benefit dominant groups (Bell 2008; Delgado 1996). Some scholars have used storytelling as a research method that involves the collection of first-person accounts (Beverley 2004; Holling 2014). Solórzano and Yosso (2002) proposed adopting critical race theory—a framework used to understand how systems of oppression interconnect to shape people’s lives (Crenshaw 1991; hooks 1984)—and storytelling as part of a broader pedagogical method that can help students identify tools for redressing intersecting forms of inequality. Solórzano and Yosso (2002:34) also described how original data collected by either instructors or students, the secondary interdisciplinary literature, and personal experiences can inform the development of “composite” characters and counter-stories.

Although cartography has been foundational to nation-state building, Caquard (2013) argued that critical cartography has helped both expose the metanarratives embedded in maps and envision maps as a medium to advance decolonial storytelling. According to Massey (1991:29), maps can offer students an opportunity to develop what she called a “global sense of place,” which involves a relational perspective of “place”—a concept that is always contested and co-constituted by both local cultural contexts and the larger global political economy. Together, storytelling and cartography can help students develop Massey’s relational global sense of place, which enables them to embark on a systematic analysis of the world.

The literature supports the use of exhibitions as a way of empowering students to do the work of decolonizing and humanizing migration/migration studies. Exhibitions are a type of embodied performance-based exercise that can be used as a stand-alone formative assessment of student learning at the culmination of a class or in conjunction with other forms of evaluation. Hands-on performance-based assessments offer students the opportunity to apply theoretical concepts, which have been shown to improve student learning outcomes and increase student engagement (Crowe and Boe 2019; Scarboro 2004). As Statham (2017:307) noted, active learning approaches allow students to develop a “way of thinking” about migration and empower them to conduct migration research. The use of exhibitions takes active learning a step further by enabling students to inspire others to challenge the dominant frameworks used to define belonging to a territorial space and in so doing, fulfills humanistic sociology’s call for praxis.

The Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment

Exactly how can instructors use the power of counter-storytelling, maps, and the exhibition format to advance a decolonial humanistic sociology that facilitates the study of migration? To identify and refine a student project that aimed at reaching this goal, Gil-García assigned the Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment, a collaborative map-based project that required students to use storytelling and physical or digital maps as part of a praxis-oriented public storytelling exhibit on global human mobility in an upper-division course on global migrations. In this section, we review the course context, course materials, and assignment details.

Course Context

Global Migrations was offered in the spring semester of 2019 as an upper-level elective course in the Department of Human Development, Binghamton University. Readings from the sociology of migration literature were featured alongside interdisciplinary scholarship that explored key themes, such as the politics of humanitarianism, immigration policy and enforcement, and the rights of migrants and refugees. The themes covered in the course allowed for a complex interdisciplinary understanding of human mobility and stasis.

The underlying objective guiding the course was twofold: (1) to further student comprehension of a fundamental contradiction of liberal democratic states: the discrepancy between the principle of national sovereignty, which implies the right to exclude anyone from citizenship or entry, and these states’ professed commitment to universal individual rights, and (2) to teach students both theoretical and practical tools that they can use to understand how this fundamental contradiction shapes human mobility globally. A decolonial humanistic sociological lens was used to help students glean deeper insight into the limits of liberal political structures and empower them to consider how they can imagine and work toward a more expansive model of democracy and global citizenship (Aboagye and Dlamini 2021).

Course Materials

The course exposed students to interdisciplinary materials in the humanities and social sciences to help them comprehend the complex state and multilateral structures that shape human mobility and stasis. These materials included scholarly texts on migration, semi-fictional accounts of migration, and maps. Collectively, these resources equipped students with tools to analyze how states and localities govern the movement of migrant populations and empowered them to explore the complexities of human mobility.

Migration texts

Assigned readings in the humanities and social sciences provided background information on how colonial histories continue to shape modern inequality. This historical context gave students a starting point to identify potential settings to include in their map-making and storytelling projects, which collectively served as a pedagogical tool to help them grasp how global political dynamics shape human mobility. For example, to learn how race, class, and gender relations under colonialism and liberal philosophy shape both state formation and capitalism, students read Lowe’s (2015) The Intimacies of Four Continents. The students’ new knowledge of how liberal ideas legitimized colonial forms of racial and gendered inequality laid the groundwork for an interdisciplinary epistemic critique of dominant frameworks used to understand human mobility. Subaltern perspectives enriched the curriculum, shedding light on the enduring role of militarism in shaping territorial control and the unequal distribution of citizenship along racial lines that produce forms of (im)mobility.

Students also read De Genova’s (2017) The Borders of “Europe”, which showed how a reduction in legal avenues for entry and heightened border surveillance strategies implemented by European governments have compelled many to seek illicit options, which are increasingly dangerous and deadly. Course readings allowed students to identify how structural factors give rise to a key paradox: a professed commitment by liberal states to universal individual rights and the principle of national sovereignty premised on exclusion of others/outsiders from citizenship or entry. According to Lowe (2015), this fundamental contradiction has a spatial and temporal quality whereby the freedoms enjoyed by the liberal subject (read: citizen) are only possible through the laboring lives of racialized populations (read: noncitizens) who inhabit various “zones of exception.” These zones of exception are constituted by the very same liberal ideas used by democratic states to normalize the production of rightless subjects who can be exposed to violence (Paik 2016).

Semi-fictional accounts

Students also read semi-fictionalized works that involved “a restructuring of events occurring within one or more ethnographic investigations into a single narrative” (Humphreys and Watson 2009:Table 2.1). Reading Nguyen’s (2017) The Refugees allowed students to explore how the Vietnamese diaspora grappled with memories of war, exile, and the struggles experienced while establishing new lives in their places of settlement. Pairing this text with De León’s (2015) semi-fictionalized ethnographic work in The Land of Open Graves elucidated the increased perils migrants face as they attempt to enter the United States.

These texts provided students with helpful examples of how semi-fictionalized ethnographic writing can allow broader audiences to relate to the circumstances experienced by complex composite characters and can be leveraged to promote policy change (Suárez-Orozco 2019). The recommendation that students apply storytelling through semi-fictionalized ethnographic writing aligns with Solórzano and Yosso’s (2002) recommendation that counter-stories be grounded in empirical data and real-life experiences.

Maps

Students were also introduced to scholarship that used maps to show the cultural, economic, and political interconnections between places and how these factors shape global migrations. For example, to visually illustrate how three seemingly disparate sites—Vietnam, Cuba, and Haiti—served to achieve U.S. militaristic and imperial objectives, Loyd and Mountz (2018) used an 1898 military war map obtained from the Library of Congress. The authors’ use of cartographic evidence deftly shows how the United States leveraged territorial possessions in the Pacific and Caribbean to construct U.S. military bases that function as strategic sites to both “process” and detain Vietnamese, Cubans, and Haitians and to determine who qualifies as a refugee or migrant. Such determinations are marked by racial and gender bias and geopolitical dynamics. As Espiritu (2014) argued, granting refugee status to people from Vietnam helped reframe U.S. involvement in the wars in Southeast Asia as part of a benevolent humanitarianism. In contrast, Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers faced prolonged confinement and were largely deemed undeserving of humanitarian protection (Loyd and Mountz 2018).

Loyd and Mountz’s (2018) map provided students with an example of how to incorporate Massey’s (1991) relational global sense of place, which includes an analysis of race, class, and gender, to facilitate a systematic analysis of the world. It also provided an opportunity for students to identify how maps can be utilized to unpack larger questions concerning the use of a carceral and deportation regime to discipline and punish those who enter the U.S. territory without authorization because they do not fit neatly into the economic-humanitarian binary of a migrant who seeks employment or refuge.

Assignment Details

The Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment included three distinct components: a literature review (which accounted for 15 percent of the total score), a collaborative exhibit/presentation (15 percent of the total score), and a final essay (20 percent of the final score). The primary objective of the literature review was to familiarize students with the scholarly literature on a topic they would explore throughout the semester. To initiate this process, student pairs were asked to identify a minimum of six peer-reviewed scholarly articles to inform the write-up of a four-page literature review and to craft a specific research question they planned to explore as part of their exhibits. All groups received substantive feedback on their midsemester literature reviews and their research questions. The feedback from the instructor aimed to ensure that students chose an appropriate research question—one that was specific enough to be achievable yet flexible enough to facilitate comprehensive exploration.

In preparation for the collaborative exhibit, students were asked to incorporate maps to enhance their analysis of specific case studies. To equip them with the necessary skills, a dedicated class session was conducted by university subject librarians focusing on accessing print and digital archival maps for their map-based storytelling projects. Subsequently, each student group either selected relevant physical or digital maps from the university library’s collection or created their own digital maps to feature during the exhibit. Additionally, each student team prepared brief presentations (10–12 minutes) elucidating how global political and economic forces shape migration patterns and examining the impacts of immigration enforcement measures on their chosen population(s) of interest. The time allotted for presentations allowed students to captivate the attention of faculty, staff, and students (invited from throughout Binghamton’s campus), many of whom were nonexperts on the topic of migration.

The integration of maps, narrative storytelling, and scholarly readings enriched the substance of student exhibits and presentations. One week before showing their exhibits to the larger Binghamton community, students presented draft versions of their projects and shared feedback with one another during class. Later, several students mentioned that sharing early drafts of their exhibits and presentations helped them refine their work and gain confidence when speaking to the public. The exhibit, which was the length of one class session, was held in a university library. Using an interactive approach, student groups presented maps, images, and narratives that shed light on various dimensions of global migration. Each presentation played continuously in a loop, enabling visitors to engage in brief conversations with different student groups or revisit presentations of their choice. This dynamic format promoted diverse interactions, providing students with valuable opportunities to engage in insightful dialogues with a range of audiences, thereby enhancing their overall learning experience.

As the concluding phase of this assignment, students were required to submit a final essay (8–10 pages, Arial, 11-point font, double-spaced) that critically engaged with the readings from their annotated bibliographies and the themes featured in their presentations. These essays could also explore host countries’ creation of barriers to integration, efforts made by sending states to advocate on behalf of nationals abroad, barriers to reintegration in countries of origin, and the impact of these dynamics on children and families. Importantly, the questions and comments received by students during the exhibit played a pivotal role in refining their research findings and addressing any criticisms or shortcomings.

Sample Exhibit

To illustrate how students engaged with the assignment and demonstrate its pedagogical value, we present an example of a student group’s project. The students in this group opened their presentation with a photo of Denis, a nine-year old child sitting alone in a reflective pose on top of a battered cinderblock wall in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, overlooking the grave of his sister, Katherine, who was brutally murdered by a local gang in 2017 (Nazario 2019). The presentation explained the perils many Central American families face. The students showed how in Honduras, the legacy of militarized violence, the 2009 U.S.-supported military coup, the near absence of jobs, and the drug trade have all contributed to the rise of gang violence and outmigration to the United States (Rosenblum 2015). The students used this context to reconstruct the story of Denis’s mother, Norma. Fearing local gangs would recruit her son, she makes the difficult decision to send him to the United States to join her sister.

This student team used a series of digital Google maps as a visual aid to illustrate Denis’s journey from Honduras to Guatemala and Mexico. These maps indicated the number of miles he had to walk and hitchhike on the trip. Thereafter, the team showed an image of migrant families in a makeshift public camp in Tapachula, Mexico, where, according to the students, Denis befriends two other migrant youth. To complement the narrative, students informed visitors that U.S. immigration enforcement now includes funding to bolster border security abroad in Mexico and Central America, prompting migrants to travel more perilous routes along their journey and thus increasing their risk of injury and death. Furthermore, when migrants are caught by immigration authorities, they can be denied their right to humanitarian protection, resulting in deportations (Echeverria et al. 2015).

Upon arriving in Mexico City, all three youth receive health services, food, and information on migratory procedures from the Human Rights Commission (HRC), which promotes health and well-being for migrant youth traveling through Mexico. The presenters showcased a photo of a map Denis and his friends found at HRC—three primary freight train routes traveling northwest, north central, and northeast with the words “Train Routes to the United States” etched onto a mural. They also shared another map, produced by the Union Pacific Railroad (UPM), that identified the main train routes migrants take throughout Mexico. These presenters mentioned how migrants use the term La Bestia (the beast) when referring to the cargo trains that serve as an important means of transportation for migrants. The term encapsulates the beast-like harm that the freight trains can inflict on those who fall on rail lines, causing permanent injuries (including death), and the violence that gangs and corrupt officers can exact on migrants (Villegas 2014). Use of these rail line maps and photographs of other migrants boarding freight trains facilitated audience members’ understanding of the risks Denis and other migrants face when riding La Bestia.

Denis and his companions decide to ride on top of a UPM train headed northwest to Hermosillo, Mexico. Denis is later informed by other migrants that a clandestine entry through the desert is the only possible option for entering the United States. Denis heeds their advice and crosses the Sonoran Altar desert—during the trip, he encounters several bodies in various states of decomposition. The students inform audience members that U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) uses an increase in deaths at the border as a measure of the effectiveness of immigration enforcement practices. Furthermore, in 2012, USBP agents initiated the Consequence Delivery System, which can result in immigration-related criminal charges that can carry lengthy sentences, an expedited removal to Mexico without appearing before an immigration judge, and repatriation far from the initial point of apprehension, as a “deterrence strategy” to prevent future illicit border entries (Moskowitz and Lee 2020).³

The criminalization of unauthorized border entries, a civil offense, has contributed to a rise in the number of detention facilities throughout the United States. To illustrate this development, these students show a final map with geolocated detention centers throughout the United States (Global Detention Project 2023). Following Denis’s apprehension, he is placed in a detention facility in Nogales, Arizona. Students later tell visitors that children are often uninformed of their rights and are deported, a violation of the principle of nonrefoulment, which under international law forbids the repatriation of migrants to countries where they may face danger.

Denis is never informed of this fundamental right, and his eventual deportation to Mexico reveals the contradiction between the principle of national sovereignty and the professed commitment of liberal democratic states to universal individual rights. Finally, the students informed visitors of Terra Firma, a migrant advocacy group that grants legal counsel and medical care for migrant children and pressures states to uphold migrant human rights (Muñiz de la Pena, Pineda, and Punsky 2019). By sharing this information, students made an ethical appeal to audience members to consider how state efforts to uphold the principle of territorial state sovereignty can simultaneously undermine viable human rights claims for arriving migrants like Denis.

Suggestions for Replication

As with all course assignments, both challenges and opportunities arose during the implementation of the Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment. One such challenge is a familiar one: students’ work in groups. To improve collaboration and workflow, a confidential peer evaluation, sent to the instructor, facilitated the assessment of each student’s contribution to the group and minimized the “free rider” problem that may arise in group projects. Nevertheless, several instances of free riding and poor communication created real obstacles for both cofacilitated class discussions and final assignments, requiring constructive feedback to group members. To de-escalate each situation, students met with the instructor to identify a possible solution. It is important for instructors to take the time to meet with all collaborative peers to avoid potential free riders, who can place a real burden on students who take on greater workloads, or to avert verbal or physical conflict. When this is not possible, students should have the option to halt a collaboration for these or other reasons that may be detrimental to their academic performance, health, or well-being. Although engaging in collaborative projects may prove difficult, it grants an opportunity for students and instructors to learn how to address conflict and adjust expectations without sacrificing academic rigor.

Other learning challenges students experienced in the course included difficulties identifying how global political and economic dynamics shape the way inequality is produced in local contexts and how these inequities, in turn, produce conditions that compel families to emigrate to other countries. The inability of some students to convey this important information made it appear that inequality is a natural phenomenon in certain countries or regions. Although information on how current inequities between nation-states are linked to historical geopolitical factors was provided at the start of the course, it is recommended that professors remind students to acknowledge how such factors uniquely shape the local contexts as part of their exhibits.

Another issue that arose stemmed from student concerns about replicating negative racial and gendered tropes in their construction of semi-fictionalized characters. To address such concerns, it may prove useful to incorporate a diverse set of readings or lectures to show how different authors grapple with issues of representation when conveying the experiences of individuals, families, and communities as they confront the local effects of global economic dynamics. Devoting time to this important topic has been shown to be beneficial to students who are engaged in digital story mapping to understand how representations are socially and culturally mediated and can shape the production of knowledge (Dickinson and Telford 2020).

Instructors may also confront the need to address students’ use of racist discourse, which reinforces hegemonic frames, in the classroom. It is important for instructors to acknowledge how the use of such discourse is a byproduct of militarized forms of exclusion that are rationalized as morally just. Educators can also identify how such comments are at odds with the professed commitment of liberal democratic states to uphold the universal individual rights of all people. Assigning readings early in the semester that explain to students how the rights of migrants and their families are inscribed in international protocols may also prove effective in preventing students from making such comments (Menjívar and Rumbaut 2008).

Instructors can offer additional information about how students can identify and critique oppressive discourse from their peers. Students need not take on this task alone. Along with providing guidance on how to diplomatically engage the situation at the start of class, faculty can include information on their syllabi regarding appropriate student decorum and resources available to students. Challenging bigotry should not be left solely to educators or students but must be actively pursued in collaboration with school leaders, which can create an environment in which anti-racist pedagogy can flourish (Lopez and Jean-Marie 2021).

Finally, instructors should consider the significant amount of time required to meet with students to provide feedback on cofacilitated class discussions, research proposals, and exhibit and presentation drafts and coordinate with library staff to prepare trainings on how to access library resources. If the assignment is used in a larger class, additional supervision conducted by a teaching assistant may help maintain the quality of feedback required for all stages of the final assignment. A graduate-level seminar could go a step further by incorporating actual ethnographic data collected via field research, which may later help students consider the value of using semi-fictionalized ethnography in a master’s capstone project or doctoral-level thesis.

Conclusion

All in all, the map-based storytelling assignment facilitated a unique educational experience in which students learned to critique the dominant push-pull nation-centered demography used to understand global migration for its unwitting reification of nationalism. Review of students’ assessment responses, particularly their final essays and their end-of-semester qualitative course evaluations, reveals the extent of this learning, providing direct evidence of their achievement of learning outcomes. Students demonstrated how global capitalism and border regimes converge to produce inequality and violence toward migrants. They also identified how former imperial states maintain significant sway in shaping global economic and political affairs and leverage this power to pass immigration enforcement measures within and outside their territories through foreign policy. In the process, students learned how certain states reap the benefits of globalization by creating oppressive conditions abroad, compelling populations from a variety of locations to migrate to more affluent destinations where they experience forms of discrimination and exploitation. In so doing, students came to understand how the past continues to shape the present globally.

The Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment proved to be an effective medium for students to advance a decolonial humanistic sociology. Indeed, several of the themes identified in qualitative course evaluations revealed how the Global Migrations Exhibit allowed students to (1) explore topics of their choice, (2) learn how to collaborate with peers, and (3) apply a global perspective to the study of inequality. A decolonial humanistic sociology allowed students to glean historical insight into how the principles of national sovereignty and universal individual human rights, both by-products of Western humanist ideas and used by liberal states to create their “democratic” projects, are fundamentally at odds with one another. Students became aware of how this central paradox has constrained the democratic promise of liberal states and contributed to the everyday violation of migrants’ human rights (Menjívar and Rumbaut 2008). Along with the use of semi-fictional accounts and maps, students used exhibits to inform audience members of social justice efforts that combat nationalism. The experience compelled visitors to make ethical judgments on the moral implications of heightened border enforcement measures that privilege state sovereignty over the human rights of migrants. Therefore, the Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment serves as a helpful tool to allow students to have a conversation with members of the public to consider how they, too, may be agents of social change who help advance a decolonial humanistic sociology.

Notably, the rapid spread of censorship bills in the United States in recent years has revealed that limits to academic freedom jeopardize both humanistic sociology’s mission to promote social change and democratic institutions. The replication of this course, therefore, may be circumscribed by the politics that shape educational policy in the United States. As of this writing, 16 states have passed laws that ban critical race theory in K–12 schools and universities (Alfonseca 2022). These laws followed the passage of an Equity Gag Order by former President Trump (2020), which barred federal agencies, contractors, and grant recipients from conducting any training or program that addresses systemic racism or sexism.

Despite President Biden’s (2021) recession of this order, efforts to restrict education on racism have spanned 36 U.S. states (Stout and Wilburn 2022). These laws can prevent faculty from broaching the topic of race in their courses out of fear that students will report them to superiors, who may pressure instructors to steer away from certain topics, cancel courses, or terminate their employment (Bloch 2021; Knowles 2021; Lundy 2021). Nationwide attempts to censor discussions of racism now affect 35 percent of all K–12 students, barring a significant segment of society from learning about the history of racism and its ongoing manifestations (Pollock et al. 2022).

To conclude, replication of this course will remain difficult in the absence of concerted efforts on the part of government leaders to halt attacks on educational freedom. The rise of anti-democratic movements, we argue, makes it ever more urgent for students to be exposed to a decolonial humanistic sociology, which nurtures new ideas that prioritize the regeneration of life over the production of goods (Mignolo 2009).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The lead author would like to thank Büşra Sati, who provided encouragement and support at all stages of this article. We are grateful to the editors and reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions.

Notes

Author Biographies

Óscar F. Gil-García is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo and is interested in international migration, global health, race, class, and gender inequality.

Büşra Sati has recently completed her doctoral degree in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University and is interested in migration studies, historical sociology, labor history, and food studies.

Justin M. Martin is an operations program manager at MetroPlusHealth and is interested in pursuing a career within the Department of Health at the state or federal level.

Luz F. Velazquez is a master’s in global human development candidate at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and is interested in the topics of gender, peace, security and fragility, conflict, and violence. She is also a 2022 Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellow and will be entering the foreign service after completion of her graduate studies.

References

Aboagye

Eva

Dlamini

Nombuso

. 2021. “The Global Context of Global Citizenship: A Pedagogy of Engagement.” Pp. 21–40 in Global Citizenship Education: Challenges and Successes, edited by Aboagye

Dlamini

. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Alba

Richard

Nee

Victor

. 1999. “Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration.” Pp. 137–60 in The Handbook of International Migration, edited by Hirschman

Kasinitz

DeWind

. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Alfonseca

Kiara

. 2022. “Map: Where Anti-critical Race Efforts Have Reached.” ABC News, March 24. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/map-anti-critical-race-theory-efforts-reached/story?id=83619715.

Bell

Derrick

. 2008. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Beverley

John

. 2004. Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bhambra

Gurminder K.

2007. Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave-MacMillan.

Biden

Joe

. 2021. “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the Federal Government.” Congress. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-advancing-racial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-the-federal-government/.

Bloch

Emily

. 2021. “Florida Education Commissioner Says He Made Sure That Amy Donofrio Was Fired; Now Her Legal Team’s Responding.” The Florida Times-Union, May 17. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/education/2021/05/17/florida-education-commissioner-richard-corcoran-says-fired-duval-county-teacher-supporting-blm/5134544001/.

Caquard

Sébastien

. 2013. “Cartography I: Mapping Narrative Cartography.” Progress in Human Geography 37(1):135–44. doi:10.1177/0309132511423796.

10.

Collins

Francis L.

2022. “Geographies of Migration II: Decolonising Migration Studies.” Progress in Human Geography 46(5):1241–51. doi:10.1177/03091325221100826.

11.

Crenshaw

Kimberle

. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43:1241–99.

12.

Crowe

Jessica

Boe

Austin

. 2019. “Integrating Undergraduate Research into Social Science Curriculum: Benefits and Challenges of Two Models.” Education Sciences 9(4):296. doi:10.3390/educsci9040296.

13.

De Genova

Nicholas P.

2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31:419–47. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085432.

14.

De Genova

Nicholas P.

2017. The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

15.

De León

Jason

. 2015. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Berkeley: University of California Press.

16.

Delgado

Richard

. 1996. The Coming Race War?: And Other Apocalyptic Tales of America after Affirmative Action and Welfare. New York, NY: New York University Press.

17.

Dickinson

Simon

Telford

Andrew

. 2020. “The Visualities of Digital Story Mapping: Teaching the ‘Messiness’ of Qualitative Methods through Story Mapping Technologies.” Journal of Geography in Higher Education 44(3):441–57. doi:10.1080/03098265.2020.1712686.

18.

Du Bois

William

Wright

R. Dean

. 2002. “What Is Humanistic Sociology?” The American Sociologist 33(4):5–36.

19.

Echeverria

Andres

Gimbel

Noah

Keiser

Lindsey

Odile

Leonard

Nelson

Mary

Nguyen

Aileen

Stefaniak

Nick

. 2015. The Cost of Stemming the Tide: How Immigration Enforcement Practices in Southern Mexico Limit Migrant Children’s Access to International Protection. Washington, DC: Georgetown Human Rights Institute Fact-Finding Project.

20.

Espiritu

Yen Le

. 2014. Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees. Berkeley: University of California Press.

21.

Ewing

Walter A.

Martínez

Daniel E.

Rumbaut

Rubén G.

. 2015. The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States. Washington, DC: American Immigration Council.

22.

Forman

Fonna

Ramanathan

Veerabhadran

. 2019. “Unchecked Climate Change and Mass Migration: A Probabilistic Case for Urgent Action.” Pp. 43–59 in Humanitarianism and Mass Migration: Confronting a World Crisis, edited by M. M.

Suárez-Orozco

. Berkeley: University of California Press.

23.

Gil-García

Óscar F

. 2018. “U.S. Immigration Enforcement and the Making of Unintended Returnees.” Représentations dans le monde anglophone, la revue électronique de la CEMRA 1:66–89.

24.

Glenn

Evelyn Nakano

. 2015. “Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1):52–72. doi:10.1177/2332649214560440.

25.

Global Detention Project. 2023. “Global Migration Facility Locator.” https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/detention-centres/map-view.

26.

Julian

. 2013. “For a Postcolonial Sociology.” Theory and Society 42(1):25–55.

27.

Golash-Boza

Tanya

Duenas

Maria D.

Xiong

Chia

. 2019. “White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and Global Capitalism in Migration Studies.” The American Behavioral Scientist 63(13):1741–59. doi:10.1177/0002764219842624.

28.

Goodwin

Glenn A.

Scimeca

Joseph A.

. 2010. “Toward the Articulation of a Humanist Perspective and the Teaching of Sociology.” TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/toward-the-articulation-of-a-humanist-perspective.

29.

Holling

Michelle A.

2014. “‘So My Name Is Alma, and I Am the Sister of . . . ’: A Feminicidio Testimonio of Violence and Violent Identifications.” Womens Studies in Communication 37(3):313–38. doi:10.1080/07491409.2014.944733.

30.

hooks

bell

. 1984. Feminist Theory from Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End Press.

31.

Humphreys

Michael

Watson

Tony

. 2009. “Ethnographic Practices: From ‘Writing up Ethnographic Research’ to ‘Writing Ethnography.’” Pp. 40–55 in Organization Ethnography: Studying the Complexity of Everyday Life, edited by Ybema

Yanow

Wels

Kamsteeg

F. H.

. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

32.

Jipson

Art

. 2002. “Using Humanistic Sociology in the Classroom.” The American Sociologist 33(4):74–85.

33.

Knowles

Hannah

. 2021. “Critical Race Theory Ban Leads Oklahoma College to Cancel Class That Taught ‘White Privilege.’” The Washington Post, May 29. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/29/oklahoma-critical-race-theory-ban/.

34.

Levitt

Peggy

DeWind

Josh

Vertovec

Steven

. 2003. “International Perspectives on Transnational Migration: An Introduction.” International Migration Review 37(3):565–75.

35.

Lopez

Ann E.

Jean-Marie

Gaëtane

. 2021. “Challenging Anti-Black Racism in Everyday Teaching, Learning, and Leading: From Theory to Practice.” Journal of School Leadership 31(1–2):50–65. doi:10.1177/1052684621993115.

36.

Lowe

Lisa

. 2015. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

37.

Loyd

Jenna M.

Mountz

Alison

. 2018. Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States. Oakland: University of California Press.

38.

Lundy

Justin

. 2021. “Activist, State Lawmaker Weigh in on the Termination of a Sullivan Central Teacher.” WCYB News, June 15. https://wcyb.com/news/local/activist-weighs-in-on-the-termination-of-a-sullivan-central-teacher.

39.

Malkki

Liisa

. 1995. “Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24:495–523.

40.

Massey

Doreen

. 1991. “A Global Sense of Place.” Marxism Today:24–29.

41.

Massey

Douglass S.

2007. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

42.

Menjívar

Cecilia

Rumbaut

Rubén G.

. 2008. “Rights of Migrants and Minorities.” Pp. 60–74 in The Leading Rogue State: The United States and Human Rights, edited by Blau

Brunsma

D. L.

Moncada

Zimmer

. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

43.

Mignolo

Walter D.

2009. “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom.” Theory, Culture & Society 26(7–8):159–81. doi:10.1177/0263276409349275.

44.

Moskowitz

Alan

Lee

James

. 2020. “Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2020.” Congress. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/22_0131_plcy_immigration_enforcement_actions_fy2020.pdf.

45.

Muñiz de la Pena

Cristina

Pineda

Lisa

Punsky

Brenda

. 2019. “Working with Parents and Children Separated at the Border: Examining the Impact of the Zero Tolerance Policy and beyond.” Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma 12(2):153–64. doi:10.1007/s40653-019-00262-4.

46.

Nazario

Sonia

. 2019. “‘Someone Is Always Trying to Kill You’: The United States Cannot Erect a Wall and Expect Women to Resign Themselves to Being Slaughtered.” The New York Times, April 5. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/05/opinion/honduras-women-murders.html.

47.

Nguyen

Viet T.

2017. The Refugees. New York, NY: Grove Press.

48.

Paik

Naomi A.

2016. Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

49.

Pollock

Mica

Rogers

John

Kwako

Alexander

Matschiner

Andrew

Kendall

Reed

Bingener

Cicely

Reece

Erika

Kennedy

Benjamin

Howard

Jaleel

. 2022. The Conflict Campaign: Exploring Local Experiences of the Campaign to Ban “Critical Race Theory” in Public K-12 Education in the U.S., 2020-2021. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access.

50.

Portes

Alejandro

Fernandez-Kelly

Patricia

Haller

William

. 2005. “Segmented Assimilation on the Ground: The New Second Generation in Early Adulthood.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(6):1000–40. doi:10.1080/01419870500224117.

51.

Pulido

Laura

. 2018. “Geographies of Race and Ethnicity III: Settler Colonialism and Nonnative People of Color.” Progress in Human Geography 42(2):309–18. doi:10.1177/0309132516686011.

52.

Riva

Sara

. 2022. “Tracing Invisibility as a Colonial Project: Indigenous Women Who Seek Asylum at the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 20(4):584–97. doi:10.1080/15562948.2021.1955173.

53.

Rosenblum

Marc R.

2015. “Unaccompanied Child Migration to the United States: The Tension between Protection and Prevention.” Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/unaccompanied-child-migration-united-states-tension-between-protection-and-prevention.

54.

Saghaye-Biria

Hakimeh

. 2018. “Decolonizing the ‘Universal’ Human Rights Regime: Questioning American Exceptionalism and Orientalism.” ReOrient 4(1):59–77.

55.

Edward

Said

. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York, NY: Knopf.

56.

Edward

Said

. 2003. “Always on Top.” London Review of Books 25(6). https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n06/edward-said/always-on-top.

57.

Saldaña-Portillo

María Josefina

. 2017. “Critical Latinx Indigeneities: A Paradigm Drift.” Latino Studies 15(2):138–55. doi:10.1057/s41276-017-0059-x.

58.

Scarboro

Allen

. 2004. “Bringing Theory Closer to Home through Active Learning and Online Discussion.” Teaching Sociology 32(2):222–31. doi:10.1177/0092055X0403200208.

59.

Schiller

Nina G.

2009. “A Global Perspective on Migration and Development.” Social Analysis 53(3):14–37.

60.

Sharma

Nandita

. 2020. Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

61.

Shetty

Salil

. 2018. Decolonising Human Rights. Geneva, Switzerland: Amnesty International.

62.

Solórzano

Daniel G.

Yosso

Tara J.

. 2002. “Critical Race Methodology: Counter-storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 8(1):23–44. doi:10.1177/107780040200800103.

63.

Speed

Shannon

. 2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

64.

Statham

Paul

. 2017. “Reflections on the Challenges of Teaching Migration in a Changing World.” Migration Studies 6(2):306–11.

65.

Stout

Cathryn

Wilburn

Thomas

. 2022. “CRT Map: Efforts to Restrict Teaching Racism and Bias Have Multiplied across the U.S.” Chalkbeat, June 9. https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism/.

66.

Suárez-Orozco

Carola

. 2019. “A Compassionate Perspective on Immigrant Children and Youth.” Pp. 99–120 in Humanitarianism and Mass Migration: Confronting the World Crisis, edited by Suárez-Orozco

. Berkeley: University of California Press.

67.

Trump

Donald J.

2020. “Combating Racial and Sex Stereotyping.” Congress. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/28/2020-21534/combating-race-and-sex-stereotyping.

68.

UNICEF. 2021. The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index. New York, NY: United Nations Children’s Fund.

69.

Villegas

Rodrigo Dominguez

. 2014. Central American Migrants and “La Bestia”: The Route, Dangers, and Government Responses. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.

70.

Waldinger

Roger

. 2015. The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and Their Homelands. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

71.

Wimmer

Andreas

Schiller

Nina G.

. 2002. “Methodological Nationalism and beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences.” Global Networks 2(4):301–34. doi:10.1111/1471-0374.00043.

72.

Wimmer

Andreas

Schiller

Nina G.

. 2003. “Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology.” The International Migration Review 37(3):576–610. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00151.x.