• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Dr Soudeh Ghaffari
• Lecturer: Professor Jen Bagelman, Dr Malene Jacobsen

• Owning School: Geography, Politics & Sociology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

This module will provide students with the essential conceptual and methodological tools to understand and engage urgent global challenges relating to various forms of migration and displacement. In this module, we discuss the major global challenges for international migrants and how these challenges are produced and experienced. Covering both theory and practice, we study how new patterns and processes affect different aspects of migrants' lives around the globe and explore the implications for the future. This module investigates links among migration, displacement, and global challenges through themes and theories such as gender, youth, race, and climate change. Uniquely, this course not only provides students with the skills to understand the diverse geographies and lived realities of migration and displacement; it also allows students to explore these realities through digital places and platforms by using digital tools. This knowledge will be relevant and speak directly to global and local humanitarian audiences.

Outline Of Syllabus

Today, there are over 200 million migrants and displaced people in the world, the highest number since World War II (UNHCR.org, 2018). This module offers theoretical approaches and practical tools to help you understand the experiences of migrants and displaced people and how migration and diasporic issues are produced, perceived, and experienced at various scales across the globe.

The module will be broken into two main sections.

Section one
The module begins with introductory ‘framing’ lectures which will i) introduce key concepts necessary to understand the complexities of migration and displacement as a long-standing and diverse colonial condition ii) introduce key intersectional approaches and ii) introduce creative digital methods for responding to the challenges of migration and displacement.

Section two
Following the foundational lectures, the module will journey through various geographical contexts, exploring precisely how migration and displacement are produced, experienced, and governed by different actors. Here students will learn about unique yet connected sites such as diasporic communities in the Caribbean to Kenyan refugee camps and African diaspora in China. The format for this second section is highly interactive. Students will be presented with a short (approximately 15-20 minute) introductory lecture which includes a series of questions to steer seminar-based conversation. Students will be asked to reflect on what they have learned from assigned readings, online videos, films, podcasts, and more.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

A semester-long course of 22 hours (11, 2-hour blocks approximately). Lectures introduce, develop, and illustrate the theory, policy, and empirical substance of the course, followed by discussing a range of case studies from all over the world to help students engage with these concepts in action. Then, every week, students will get a chance to explore these topics and discuss these concepts in a more engaged-seminar style small group teaching. The proposed topics below are indicative and subject to change based on interest/availability. To pique students’ interest further, a guest speaker will deliver a workshop on topics related to the use of technology in (mis)representing migrants.
Topics could include:
- Introductions to key concepts such as migration, displacement, internal displacement
- Exploring digital tools in analysing and addressing migration and displacement
- Displacement and Climate Change
- Conflict, War and Displacement
- Migration and intersectionality
- Migration & Diversity
- Migration and Trauma
- Migration and Digital Inequalities
- Migration and Justice

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The module is assessed by two coursework submissions:
1.       The first assessment is a digital storytelling task in which students will communicate ideas (from section one 'framing' lectures) of the module for a non-academic audience. Digital storytelling has emerged as a powerful teaching and learning tool, which presents personal narratives, images, and music to create a unique and sometimes emotional snapshot into another person's experience. Through explaining a concept, reflecting on a personal experience, retelling a historical event, or making an argument, students use multimodal tools to bring narratives of migration challenges to life. By offering a platform for sharing and understanding such narratives, students may gain insight into a perceived experience, enable vulnerable voices to be heard, and construct their professional roles accordingly. For making this 3-5-minute multimodal video, students will learn to brainstorm to determine the purpose of their digital story, create a script and storyboard, and finally, create their videos by gathering/creating images or video clips and choosing music and sound effects. This project is worth 40% of the final mark.
2.       The second assignment is a 3000-word essay, which is due at the end of the module. This will be a critique assignment in which the student assesses the effectiveness of an academic source/policy brief/official statement in achieving its stated aims in reflecting migrants’ challenges in a global context and evaluates its value as a reliable resource. Drawing on all the learning materials from the module including theories and class discussions, students will need to demonstrate critical thinking and present it while paying attention to structure, syntax, and referencing. This essay is worth 60% of the final module mark.
These two assessments will not only accommodate different learning styles but are aimed at developing academic and employability skills; the video-making process provides an opportunity to experience effective communication and critical thinking while developing new skills within real-world settings and with a particular focus on the digital sphere. By learning to assess visual and textual documentation, in the second assignment, students discuss the implications of concepts and issues relating to migrants and displaced people within their own positionality catering to socio-geographical contexts and the digital culture (digital platforms, media).

Reading Lists

• GEO8031's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• GEO8031's Timetable