Prospectus

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Elective: The Challenges of Globalization, Migration, and Cross-Border Mobility

Course
2025-2026

Admission requirements

Admission to the Master’s programme Law and Society.

Description

Migration and cross-border mobility are long-standing features of human societies, but recent decades of intensifying globalisation, geopolitical upheaval, and environmental change have added new layers of complexity and heightened visibility to these phenomena. The emergence of so-called “migration crises” reveals the contested, politicised, and deeply unequal nature of global mobility today.
This course takes a socio-legal, multilevel, and interdisciplinary approach to examining how human movement across borders is governed, enforced, and represented. It explores how legal systems, political agendas, and social assemblages interact to shape migration patterns, governance frameworks, enforcement practices, public discourse, and lived experiences.

Course objectives

At the end of this course, students are able to:

  • analyse migration and cross-border mobility through socio-legal and interdisciplinary frameworks

  • examine how legal, political, and institutional actors regulate human mobility at local, national, and international levels

  • apply theoretical and empirical insights to real-world case studies and current debates on migration governance

  • explore the mechanisms of enforcement at borders and within migration regimes, including interception, detention, expulsion, and surveillance practices

  • reflect on the ethical, political, and human rights implications of contemporary mobility regimes

Timetable

Check MyTimetable.

Mode of instruction

  • Description: Lectures and Workgroup sessions

  • Names of lecturers: Amalia Campos-Delgado with potential additional guest lecturers

  • Required preparation by students: reading assigned literature and additional multimedia class materials

Assessment method

  • Portfolio of assignments both made before and during class (60% of grade) and Final essay (40% of grade)

  • Instructions on assignments will be available in the course syllabus.

  • Students are expected to achieve a minimum grade of 5.5 for the written essay

  • A re-take of the written essay can be retaken if the overall grade is below 5.5.

  • There is no retake for assignments.

Reading list

Course materials
Mandatory and recommended reading materials will be distributed via Brightspace.

Registration

Registration for courses and exams takes place via MyStudymap. If you do not have access to MyStudymap (guest students), look here (under the Law-tab) for more information on the registration procedure in your situation.  

Contact

  • Coordinator: Dr. Amalia Campos-Delgado

  • Work address: Steenschuur 25, 2312 ES Leiden

  • Email: a.e.campos.delgado@law.leidenuniv.nl

Institution/division

  • Institute: Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of the Law

  • Department: Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance & Society

  • Room number secretary: B1.14

  • Opening hours: Monday to Thursday and Friday morning

  • Telephone number secretary: +31 (0) 71 527 7260

  • Email: SecretariatVVI@LAW.leidenuniv.nl

Remarks