Teaching Immigration Politics Through COIL: A U.S. and Sweden Case Study
Teaching and researching immigration politics leaves you at the mercy of the moment. The increasingly hostile rhetoric towards immigrant communities looms over us as we teach students the theoretical and empirical research about immigration politics. This divisive issue is not unique to the United States. Politicians and political parties across many countries have emerged on the single issue of closing borders and excluding immigrants from society. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) provides an opportunity for students to explore and understand immigration politics beyond the United States. In the Winter Quarter of 2025, my Advanced Seminar on Migration Politics included a module where we collaborated with our partners in Lund University鈥檚 (LU) Political Science Department. 澳门娱乐场 students met and collaborated with LU students in Dr. Jonathan Polk鈥檚 course in Comparative Politics.
The political science departments at 澳门娱乐场 and LU have a strong partnership through the Global Masters program. To further enhance the partnership, we have had discussions about potential COIL courses. Conversations began with Professor Polk鈥檚 visit to Denver in February 2024 and my visit to Lund that same year. Our conversation about a COIL on immigration politics arose due to the geographies of our institutions. Lund is a short train ride to Malm枚, which is home to one of Sweden鈥檚 largest immigrant populations and has often been the focal point of immigration politics in Sweden. Similarly, Denver is adjacent to Aurora, which is also home to immigrants of various backgrounds.听
Our goal was to develop a COIL project where students examine the similarities and differences between the United States and Sweden at the national level, as well as the local level through Denver and Malm枚. What we did not expect was Aurora, Colorado to be the center of the immigration issue during the 2024 US presidential campaigns due to the misinformation and lies about the immigrant communities there. Teaching this COIL required students to address the current moment. The meetings between 澳门娱乐场 and LU students began as deportation raids occurred in nearby communities in the Denver area. Students had to confront a much larger question: how and why have the U.S. and Sweden reached this point?
Professor Polk and I organized seven groups of 澳门娱乐场 and LU students to meet and discuss the course material that addressed the following topics: (1) why do people migrate, (2) public opinion on immigration, and (3) where political parties stand. They had to analyze these topics at the national level (US/Sweden) and at the local level (Denver/Malm枚). The COIL concluded with a video project where students presented their comparative analysis in a 20-minute collaborative video. The quality of their analysis was brilliant. Students embraced the challenge to address one of the most important (and complex) questions in political science and today鈥檚 political environment. COIL allowed students to understand the world around them and the communities they live in at the same time.
Through COIL, the students taught me how important it is to confront current events as they happen and use our expertise as scholars to explain what is going on and generate new questions. This experience taught me new ways of teaching that I plan to develop in all my courses. What I did not expect from COIL was that the student collaborations would inspire me to take on new research endeavors. Evaluating assignments became a productive intellectual experience that led me to develop new research ideas. I am now developing research proposals to examine immigration politics between different cities in different countries. I no longer feel at the mercy of the moment when teaching. Rather, I learned from students to leverage the moment so we can learn, question, and understand together as a community.
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Jesse Acevedo
Assistant Professor, Political Science
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