Aims
This course aims to:
• set our contemporary concern with international migration in its full and proper cultural and historical context
• outline the various contemporary debates on migration: is it good, or bad, for sending countries, receiving countries, and migrants themselves? are current rates of migration normal or exception?
• explore how our way of thinking about migration is shaped by circumstance, and how we might escape this
Content
The human story has always been one of migration: still true in our globalised world of contiguous nation-states. Yet migration's universalism is matched by the fear (however unfounded) it often provokes. We explore this 'migration paradox' - historically, cross-culturally, philosophically and politically – from a current perspective, and to assess what the future holds in our increasingly mobile world. While the course will cover the broader place of migration in the human story, it will primarily focus on the nature and place of migration in the modern, global system of nation-states.
This course aims to provide a neutral perspective not just on migration, but also the politics and debates surrounding it. To achieve this, the course pulls right back, and sets our contemporary preoccupation with migration in its broadest historical and cultural context.
In their course, the lectures cover the deep anthropological and biological anthropological roots and routes of migration, which set in train the course of human history. It then examines the role of migration in that history, particularly in the context of the emergence of the nation state and the advent of European colonialism.
Turning to more modern times, the course then examines the institutions that shape the global governance of migration, before turning to the role of emigration in home-country development. The course then scrutinises the arguments for and against immigration on ‘global north’ countries and examines the various theories that exist to explain what drives migration in the first place. The course then critically examines the relationship between climate change and migration, before concluding with a discussion on the future trends of migration.
Presentation of the course
The course will be taught over five two-part lectures, with time for questions at the end of each.
Course sessions
1. International Migration: context and background
In this first session, we will discuss the current political climate around migration, before moving on to discuss the place of migration in our prehistory, as we advanced from a local to a global species.
2. Migration and the State: the invention of a 'problem', and the Age of Empire
In this second session, we will explore how the emergence of the administrative nation state invented the idea and problem of 'international migration'. We will then examine how migration, and slavery in particular in turn played a central role in building the modern world and its industrial economy.
3. Migration and Modernity: the role of international institutions, and the impact
of migration on development
In the third session, we will examine the emergence, following the Second World War of institutions to protect refugees, and to govern migration in general. We will then examine the various arguments for the effect of 'global south' emigration on home-country development.
4. The Nature of Migration: perspectives on its effects and its causes
In the fourth session, we will explore the debates on the impact of immigration on 'global north' countries, before turning to how we can understand what 'drives' or 'causes' migration.
5. The Future of Migration: what we don't know about the climate, and what we know
about society
In the final session, we will examine whether fears of 'climate migration' are valid, and look at future trends in migration, particularly with regard to human trafficking, and the diplomatic weaponization of migration by states.
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• to be aware of the broad range of issues at play when we think about international migration
• to be aware of the various debates on those issues
• to be able to set migration in its full and proper context, particularly with regard to the history of liberal democracy
Required reading
Betts, Alexander, & Collier, Paul, Refuge: transforming a broken refugee system (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017)
De Haas, Hein, Castles, Stephen, & Miller, Mark, The Age of Migration: international population movements in the Modern World (London, Bloomsbury, 2019)
Livi-Bacci, Massimo, A Short History of Migration (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2012)
