Admission requirements
This course is only open to students of the Legal Track (LL.M.) of the LDE Master on the Governance of Migration and Diversity, sub-track to European law LL.M.
Description
How free are people’s mobilities in the face of globalization and expanding governance of migration and diversity? Who is mobile and at what costs? When does migration become a privilege, a livelihood strategy, or a misfortune? Does more development lead to less migration which is still the predominant view in policy circles, or is there more to this story? Development of what, where and for whom?
This course engages with different facets of the migration-development nexus. Seeking to move towards a global approach to the interlinked processes of migration and development, it gives a prominent role to perspectives from the global South. It notes multiple triggers for migration (including conflict, environmental change and different forms of inequalities); and some of its implications (e.g. remittances and transnational ties, changes in gender and generational relations, cultural and political impacts) at the individual, household, community, regional and global level.
Development is a contested notion, with understandings ranging from macroeconomic growth to capability enhancement to the perception of development as a tool to reproduce social hierarchies. The course engages with these diverse and often contradictory perspectives when exploring the migration-development nexus, yet, uses the notion of development as human security and capabilities, and human rights as normative points of reference. This vantage point helps to overcome the misleading binary of involuntary refugees versus voluntary labour migrants, as well as of migrants versus non-migrants, by understanding migration as a continuum of processes shaped both by structural forces and people’s agency to escape insecurities and look for more secure livelihoods and ways to fulfil their aspirations. A migrant-centered, rather than state-centred approach, to the role of migration in development is expressed in the engagement with how migrants’ and non-migrants’ intersecting identities of gender, race, class - among others - shape experiences of migration and development as well as a focus on their ability and capability to, individually and collectively, challenge and change the structures in which (im)mobilities are embedded.
Course objectives
Objectives of the course
At the end of this course, students will have acquired:
Explain how both the triggers and implications of migration relate to different aspects of (under)development based on examples from across the world
Demonstrate the key features of the dominant conceptualisations, and their limitations
Relate migration processes, systems, and life experiences, in relation to global economic systems, mobility regimes, and different strategies for coping and livelihood
Analyse holistically the livelihood situations of migrants and their families, their well-being and ill-being, using a human security framework
Assess debates about migration and forced migration or displacement, and common depictions of migrant agency from an intersectional perspective
Formulate a concise and effective analysis of related policies and issues and communicate it clearly
Timetable
Course will take place at International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Infornation on timetable will be provided vie different means.
Mode of instruction
Guest lectures
Participatory Lecture
Presentation
Study visit
Workshop
Assessment method
Examination form(s)
Reflection paper: 25%
Essay: 70%
Discussion: 5%
Submission procedures
Areas to be tested within the exam
The examination syllabus consists of the required reading (literature) for the course, the course information guide and the subjects taught in the lectures, the seminars and all other instructions which are part of the course.
Reading list
Obligatory course materials
Literature will be announced in due time.
Registration
Information about registration for this course will follow.
Contact
Coordinator: SM Spaa (contact person), dr. Z Kasli (coordinator)
Work address: Kortenaerkade 12, 's – Gravenhage; I3-28
Email: kasli@iss.nl
Institution/division
- International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Remarks
This course is given by Erasmus University Rotterdam and forms part of the specialisation LDE Governance of Migration and Diveristy – Legal, a sub-track of the European Law Master (LL.M.). It can only be attended by students enrolled in this programme.