Aims

Population displacement is an increasingly salient feature of contemporary societies. This module is a social science exploration of how forced displacement is produced, regulated, and experienced. It focuses on displacement to interrogate issues of citizenship, belonging, and exclusion. It deals with the interaction between the policing of physical borders and the production of societal boundaries and inequalities. Lectures will focus on refugee camps and international humanitarianism in the Global South and in the European context.

The key aims of this module are:

To provide a conceptual and theoretical overview of sociological and anthropological debates about refugees and displacement.

To identify key connections between the formation and management of refugee camps globally.

To explore how forced displacement affects human beings, social relationships, nation-states, and international relations.

Outline Of Syllabus

Refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, and aliens—these are all categories that are excluded from “the national order of things,” which is defined by citizenship, borders, and state sovereignty. In this module, we study sociological and anthropological approaches to international population movement, especially forced displacement. We focus on how displacement interacts with issues of citizenship, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. We develop a transnational perspective on immobile refugees living in camps in different parts of the world. The module may include the following:

- population displacement in historical and contemporary perspectives;
-the salience of displacement for key societal issues such as belonging, access to resources, democracy, and human rights;
-policing of borders and the arrival of asylum seekers, paying attention to both the experiences of the asylum seekers and the public and policy debates within receiving societies.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The live PiP lectures will introduce students to key theoretical approaches, policy concerns, public debates, and empirical studies about refugee issues. These will be explored and discussed in more detail in interactive (live PiP) seminars (small group activities). The live PiP workshops will be dedicated to i) additional materials e.g. short documentaries and ii) assessment preparation and feedback.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The two essays will enable students to explore in detail a topic of their choice, assembling and analysing information, organising material and putting forward a coherent and reasoned argument. The second essay will give students the opportunity to further improve their critical thinking and writing skills as they develop a more nuanced and detailed knowledge about refugee issues.

The first assignment (essay 1) is preceded by a formative assessment (an essay plan), which is optional for students.