BLST 121. Race, Unfreedom, and Statelessness

(Cross-listed with SOCI 121.)
This course examines statelessness, citizenship, and unfreedom as interconnected conditions produced by modern states rather than exceptional failures. Through historical and contemporary cases across the Americas, the Caribbean, and the global South, students analyze how law, documentation, labor regimes, and borders create populations that are formally free yet substantively constrained. Race and labor operate throughout as structuring forces shaping belonging, dispossession, and differential access to rights. Readings draw from sociology, history, legal studies, and Black Studies, pairing theory with empirical cases. Students will interrogate how freedom is unevenly distributed and how unfreedom persists after slavery, emancipation, and decolonization in modern societies.
Social Sciences.
2 credits.
Spring 2027. Veras.
Catalog chapter: Black Studies.
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/black-studies

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