POL410H1S L0201

Topics in Comparative Politics III

Global Migration: Laborers, Refugees, Expellees, and Others

Themes

Today, more people are on the move than at any time in human history: 284 million. This figure has more than tripled since 1975 (90 million). Migration discourse conceptualizes various concepts to explain these movements, such as ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntary’, and ‘feminization of migration’.
In 2023, the total number of involuntary migrants – refugees, internally displaced persons, and asylum seekers – crossed the 100 million mark. Voluntary migration also occurs on all continents and in all countries - today almost 164 million are migrant workers. In both categories, almost half of migrants are females. Together, flight, expulsion, voluntary movement, and multiple combinations of the three transform societies, underpin economies, disrupt politics, and change gender relations. Migration is one of the defining issues of our age.
Focusing on the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, the course will examine the history, policy on, economics, and politics of involuntary (forced including refugees) and voluntary migration. It will provide a comprehensive grounding in the subject for students considering (further) postgraduate or professional work in the field, and it will pursue an overarching theme: that the exigencies of economies, the need for work, and dependency drive the majority of global migration.

Texts

There are two required texts for the course:
Elena Fiddian-Qasmeyeh (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Hereafter Handbook. Available online at Robarts.
James F. Hollifield et al., Controlling Immigration: A Comparative Perspective (Stanford University Press, 2022). Hereafter Controlling Immigration.
You will also read my recently published work (articles plus chapters from a book) on gender mainstreaming of European employment and integration legal framework.

Format and Requirements

Essay Outline (10%); Essay (50%); Final Take-Home Test (25%); Participation (15%)

Prerequisites

2.0 credits in POL/ JPA/ JPF/ JPI/ JPR/ JPS/ JRA courses