Introductory description

Humanity in the 21st century is experiencing an age of rapid and intense transformation in virtually all aspects of life. This module explores a key area of such contemporary transformation: migration and borders. These two words often represent a highly concerning topic in our increasingly globalised world, although people have moved from place to place all across history and borders have been made and challenged before present-day nation-states existed. What does this tell us as a society or even about our species? What can we all make sense out of this?
In this module, we invite students to approach migration and borders as prisms to rethink social reality. Our interest is to bring together diverse and up-to-date research endeavours studying mobilities, migration and borders from the standpoint of multiple disciplinary agendas, focusing on the interdisciplinary approach of international migration and the interlinked configuration of global borderlands. Beyond mainstream political discussions and traditional theoretical approaches, we aim to reimagine migration and borders as key methodological devices for an interdisciplinary understanding of complex human and non-human interactions, identity formation, and global power in our contemporary world. In doing so, we propose to create a comprehensive dialogue towards the study of migration and borders by intersecting knowledge with advances in criminology, sociology, climate change and environmental studies, digital technologies, global justice, and the performing arts amongst others.

Module aims

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.

Week 1 – Introduction: An interdisciplinary take on migration and borders
In this introduction, we will set out in an introductory lecture focusing on the central themes, aims, and concepts that will be approached across the module. The session will focus on the discussion and debate on key terms such as mobility, migration, borders, the “global”, and other key notions that will be covered in this module.

Part 1: Human mobilities and the more-than-human

Week 2 – Global mobilities and the more-than-human
In the second session we will engage with the perspective of the more-than-human. In so doing, students will know more about traditional anthropocentric views on migration and how recent scholarship founded in both post-humanist and decolonial approaches has added to the study of global mobility in an increasingly complicated content.

Week 3 – Migration ecologies and climate change
This session will reflect on the difficulties related to understanding migration and mobility in the age of human-produced environmental transitions. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on how displacement in times of climate crisis has transformed into an essential concern for the future and how environments are experiencing changes.

Part 2: Demystifying migrant subjectivities

Week 4 – Gendering and racialising migration
This session will highlight the meaning of an intersectional approach towards the study of borders and migration. Students will have the chance to reflect on how gendered and racialised experiences of migrants challenge and add to traditional understandings of immigration.

Week 5 – Border criminologies
This session will discuss how borders can be studied from the point of view of critical criminal studies, in an age of increased violence, coercion, and forced global im/mobility. Students will be able to analyse how regularity, illegality and immobility are produced in global discussions about smuggling, detention and incarceration in an increasingly politicised global landscape.

Week 6 – Migration, performances and identities
This session will offer students the opportunity to reflect on how migration and borders can be seen as part of personal, intimate, and embodied experiences, with different social and political meanings. This week will include a take on migrants’ experiences from the view of psychology and anthropology, in our contemporary globalised context.

Part 3: Debordering futures

Week 7 – Migration in an (ageing) society
The session will engage with conversation children, youth migrants as well as the “expatriate” communities within labour mobility regimes. We will critically engage with topics such as COVID-19 pandemic and the viral borders within migration studies in an increasingly interconnected world.

Week 8 – Digital borders
The session will consider how increased digitalisation and automatisation of global societies affect the creation, continuity, and contestation of borders globally. We will cover issues such as algorithmic borders, the politics of these seemingly innocuous transitions, and the new topics of discussion that emerge in migration and border studies as digitalisation continues to colonise global social life.

Week 9 – Decolonising borders and resistances
This session will invite students to think differently about migration and borders from the perspective of non-Western thought and marginal voices made up by activists and everyday people on the move. The notion of coloniality and decoloniality will serve to approach the subject of migration and borders from a point of view that diverges form that of nation-states and international institutions.

Week 10 – G(l)ocal mobilities
The last session offers a take on their own research on migration and borders to set a study agenda for future global developments in space of their own local contexts. The session will serve as an opportunity to sum up the key findings, queries, and themes advanced throughout the module. It will also serve to pose new questions about the future of global and local takes on migration and borders, form an interdisciplinary perspective.

Learning outcomes

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

• Critically evaluate the complex and intersectional nature of contemporary forms of global human mobility.
• Address and deconstruct bordering practices throughout diverse institutions, regimes and actors.
• Analyse and evaluate the the complex interplay of expansion of borders, barriers, drivers, and ‘intermediaries’ across global mobilities in the contemporary world.
• Synthesise knowledge onmigration, identity formation, subjectivity and their connections to broader social, political, cultural, geographical, and environmental transformations.
• Communicate to different audiences complex ideas and concepts using creative methods to advocate and challenge mainstream understandings on global migration.
• Formulate and justify evidence-based proposals for future action in response to contested migration and mobility-related challenges.

Indicative reading list

Anzaldúa, G. (2009) “Border Arte: Nepantla, el Lugar de la Frontera.” in Keating, A. (ed) The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Anzaldúa, Gloria (2007) Borderlands/ La Frontera The New Mestiza, Aunte Lute, San Francisco.

Bhambra, G. K., Medien, K., & Tilley, L. (2020). Theory for a global age: From nativism to neoliberalism and beyond. Current Sociology, 68(2), 137-148.

Bhatia, M. (2023). Reproductive injustice in Britain: punishing illegalized migrant women from the Global South and separating families. Identities, 30(4), 471-489.

Bosworth, M. (2019). Immigration Detention, Punishment and the Transformation of Justice. Social & Legal Studies, 28(1), 81-99.

Brettell, C. B., & Hollifield, J. F. (2022). Introduction: Migration theory: Talking across disciplines. In Migration theory (pp. 1-43). Routledge

Chase, E., Sigona, N., & Chatty, D. (Eds.) (2023). Becoming Adult on the Move: Migration Journeys, Encounters and Life Transitions. Palgrave Macmillan.

Chouliaraki, L., & Georgiou, M. (2022). The digital border: Migration, technology, power (Vol. 44). NYU Press.

Favell, A. (2022). Immigration, integration and citizenship: elements of a new political demography. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(1), 3-32.

Garelli, Glenda, and Tazzioli, M."Challenging the discipline of migration: militant research in migration studies, an introduction." Postcolonial Studies 16.3 (2013): 245-249.

Grosfoguel, R., Oso, L. and Christou, A., (2014) ‘Racism’, intersectionality and migration studies: framing some theoretical reflections. Identities, 22(6), pp.635-652.

Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E. (2018). “The Coloniality of Migration and the “Refugee Crisis”: On the Asylum-Migration Nexus, the Transatlantic White European Settler Colonialism-Migration and Racial Capitalism”. Refuge, 34(1).

Hintz, A., Dencik, L., & Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2017). Digital citizenship and surveillance society-introduction. International Journal of Communication, 11, 731-739.

Jones, H., & Gunaratnam, Y. (2017). Go home: the politics of immigration controversies. Manchester University Press.

Menjívar, C., & Abrego, L. (2012). Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants. American Journal of Sociology, 117(5), 1380–1421. https://doi.org/10.1086/663575

Pallister‐Wilkins, P., 2011. The separation wall: A symbol of power and a site of resistance?. Antipode, 43(5), pp.1851-1882.

Tazzioli, M. Border abolitionism Migrants' containment and the genealogies of struggles and rescue. Manchester University Press

Walia, H. (2013) Undoing Border Imperialism, AK Press.

Research element

Students will undertake an individual supervised project (SDA) that requires researching on a specific topic of interest, in connection with one of the weeks’ topics. They will work closely with their tutor to develop their projects in an agreed format which best suits their ideas. Afterwards, students will submit their project and provide a document detailing their rationale, resources and supporting materials.

Interdisciplinary

At the heart of this module an interdisciplinary ethos allows for thinking about the intersections of migration, mobilities and borders, as well as for the construction of the binary of the social and the natural world. Thus, in this module students are invited to think about some of the module’s main discussions beyond their disciplinary silos. This module builds “bridges” across the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences, to further their understanding on the human and non-human. In that sense, some of the disciplines that we will be specifically address are critical geographies, environmental studies, gender studies, criminology, theatre studies, digital technologies, and social justice. Each week is designed for a guest speaker from distinct backgrounds to present on their expertise while tutors will then organise the discussion to highlight the thematical and conceptual linkages across the different topics and discuss alongside students the depth and limits for global migration and reinforcement of borders.

International

An international perspective is deeply embedded in this module, through which global migration and global borders will be approached. The module connects distintive traditions of knowledge based on the expertise of different experts building their own research from different places and positions in the context of global approaches to the social world. In that way, reflecting on the international, national, social and local settings and contexts will be encouraged as we also think about other divisions, including the human and the more-than-human that binds us together. Case studies of migration in the Global North and Global South will provide ways to illustrate some of the discussions at hand whilst extending their theoretical and practical implications.

Subject specific skills

Critical appropriation of knowledge on global migration, identity formation, and related bordering processes.

Ability to interpret the human and non-human connections shaping contemporary global mobilities.

Understanding of a range of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of global migration.

Ability to draw on case studies and current discussions on migration management to understand its effects on people’s subjectivities and actions.

Understanding of the possibilities derived from re-imagining and re-envisioning global migration and contemporary border landscapes.

Transferable skills

Active listening

Critical reflection

Independent work

Interpersonal communicative skills

Information literacy

Research skills

Project management

Self-management and responsibility