Semester 1: Mediterranean Migration: Dynamics and Consequences on the EU and MENA
What are the causes, dynamics and consequences of international population movements? What are the key trends and patterns of migration in the major world region? How does migration trends form both destination and origin societies? What are the effects of migration and increasing ethnic diversity on national identity and politics? How has the Global North elected to manage the forced flow of people from the Global South? We will address these questions among others and survey the critical assessments of the policies whereby the host nations try to manage these flows and discourage mobility.
The readings of the first weeks of the semester—based on our main textbook the Age of Migration—will give us a profound understanding of the theories of migration, and empirical research from a variety of disciplines; namely sociology, political science, history, anthropology and geography. We will have an opportunity to hear from some of the leading scholars and journalists, lawyers specialized in international migration law; and we will also watch short documentaries to get a closer sense of cases in the EU and MENA regions.
Our End of Semester project will be exploring success stories of migrants in St. Louis; this could be building on your project in the fall semester; or we could agree on identifying success stories of refugees/migrant communities in the state, e.g., the Iraqi, Senegalese, Bosnian communities. To get a closer look at the public-civic interaction in facilitating refugee incorporation, we will discuss our planned visits to associations working with refugees and migrants in Morocco as one of the main key crossing border states linking both sides of the Mediterranean.
Semester 2: Migration Policies and Colonialism: Refugee Resettlement and Integration
This course will continue our investigation of the dynamics of migration in the MENA and African countries primarily and re-orient the discussions towards the much-overlooked cause of migration: colonialism. To achieve genuine refugee/migrant oriented reform policies, the Global North needs to reconcile with its colonial past. Towards this end, we will highlight how the history of migration is deeply entangled with colonialism.
Our readings-based discussions will focus on analyzing how colonial logics continue to shape the dynamics of migration as well as fuel the growing xenophobia and anti-migration rhetoric in the Global North towards intercontinental human mobility. To understand the enduring legacies of colonialism on the contemporary politics of migration, our discussions will argue the premise that colonial histories should be central to migration studies today for there to be real reform in refugee, asylum, and migrant policies. We will explore a wide range of inspiring and challenging perspectives on migration and learn what postcolonial and decolonial scholarships can offer us studying international migration today. We will address these areas through our weekly readings of Migration Studies and Colonialism as a primary source; we will also survey a selection of articles as a secondary source. To supplement the readings, we will watch short documentaries addressing the topic as well as hear from activists, journalists, and specialists in the field.
