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Module Catalogue

HI3H7-30 Foreign Bodies, Contagious Communities: Migration in the Modern World

Department
History
Level
Undergraduate Level 3
Module leader
Roberta Bivins
Credit value
30
Module duration
22 weeks
Assessment
100% coursework
Study location
University of Warwick main campus, Coventry

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Introductory description

This module explores mass migration, ideas of belonging and emerging cultures of health and welfare in the era of border control and formal citizenship - that is, from the late nineteenth through to the twentieth-first century.

Module web page

Module aims

It will examine the patterns, pathways and outcomes of the continuous large-scale movements of population across the globe so characteristic of the modern period. Through case studies of international, imperial and diasporic migrations, it will assess migrants’ significant and reciprocal impacts on the systems and institutions of the state, including those associated with health and welfare. Finally, we will examine the relationships and intersections between ethnicity, race and migration, and the ways in which close scrutiny of migration can generate new perspectives on gender, sexuality, dis/ability and class. This module will actively engage with present-day issues involving migration, ethnicity and health, such as responses of governments and health care providers to migration ‘crises’; and the (perceived and actual) cultural, social and epidemiological impacts of migrants on host communities and cultures, in light of historical perspective. How do we write and speak about the history of migration during a migration crisis?

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Term 1

  1. Introduction: Why (and whose) history of migration?
  2. Making ‘immigrants’: immigration law and national citizenship
  3. Arrival: The Island Immigration Stations
  4. Settlement Part 1: The Limits of Assimilationism and Integration
  5. Settlement Part 2: From Migrants to Citizens
  6. Reading week
  7. From ‘Braceros’ to ‘illegals’: (re) making Mexican ‘migrants’
  8. ‘Civis Britannicus Sum’: forging an imperial citizenship
  9. From Prison Colony to ‘White Australia’
  10. British Migrants in the 20thCentury: ‘£10 poms’ and ‘Home Children’

Term2

  1. ‘We are here because you were there’: migration and the metropole
  2. ‘This crowded isle’: the end of ‘Open Door’ Britain
  3. Migration, multiculturalism, and medicalization
  4. Models of African mobility: the forced and the free
  5. Imperial pasts and migrant presence: Africa in the metropole
  6. Reading week
  7. ‘Money has no smell’: travellers, traders and ‘economic migrants’
  8. Homelands and Hostlands: hybrid homes or multiple identities
  9. Naming to control: 'Coolies', 'Yids', 'Yanks', and 'Dagos'; 'Wogs', 'Pakis', 'Towelheads', and 'Negros'
  10. Workshop: seeing ‘migrants’ in the media

Term 3

  1. Conclusion: Ethnicity, exoticism and ‘multiculturalism’

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

  • Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of the role of mass migration in the emergence of contemporary models of citizenship and the state and the reciprocal impacts of migration on both host and home societies and cultures.
  • Critically analyse and evaluate a range of migration case studies from a comparative perspective, paying due attention to changes over time and regionality.
  • Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, relating to the role of health and medicine in shaping responses to migration and ethnic diversity.
  • Take responsibility to identify, design, and produce a coherent project on migration and ethnicity by creating content for a non-academic audience.
  • Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to issues of migration and ethnicity in the modern period.
  • Produce critically engaged undergraduate scholarship on the history and contemporary impacts of migration.

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Specific reading list for the module

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.

Study time

Type Required
Seminars 19 sessions of 2 hours (13%)
Tutorials 4 sessions of 1 hour (1%)
Private study 258 hours (86%)
Total 300 hours

Private study description

History modules require students to undertake extensive independent research and reading to prepare for seminars and assessments. As a rough guide, students will be expected to read and prepare to comment on three substantial texts (articles or book chapters) for each seminar taking approximately 3 hours. Each assessment requires independent research, reading around 6-10 texts and writing and presenting the outcomes of this preparation in an essay, review, presentation or other related task.

Costs

No further costs have been identified for this module.

You must pass all assessment components to pass the module.

Assessment group A1
Weighting Study time Eligible for self-certification
Assessment component
Seminar contribution 10% No
Reassessment component
1000 word reflection Yes (extension)
Assessment component
1500 word essay 10% Yes (extension)
Reassessment component is the same
Assessment component
3000 word applied history assignment 40% Yes (extension)
Reassessment component is the same
Assessment component
3000 word essay 40% Yes (extension)
Reassessment component is the same
Feedback on assessment

Written feedback provided via Tabula; optional oral feedback in office hours.

Courses

This module is Optional for:

  • Year 3 of UENA-VQ32 Undergraduate English and History

This module is Option list A for:

  • Year 3 of UHIA-V100 Undergraduate History
  • Year 4 of UHIA-V101 Undergraduate History (with Year Abroad)

This module is Option list B for:

  • Year 3 of UHIA-V1V5 Undergraduate History and Philosophy
  • Year 4 of UHIA-V1V6 Undergraduate History and Philosophy (with Year Abroad)
  • Year 3 of UHIA-VM11 Undergraduate History and Politics
  • Year 4 of UHIA-VM12 Undergraduate History and Politics (with Year Abroad)
  • Year 3 of UHIA-VL13 Undergraduate History and Sociology
  • Year 4 of UHIA-VL14 Undergraduate History and Sociology (with Year Abroad)