240019 VS Rethinking Migration and Cities (3.2.2) (2021W)

The aim of this class is to focus on how urban governance comes to include migrant communities in their narratives, policies, and trajectories. By placing migration in relation to global dynamics and taking on a multiscalar perspective, we come to understand how societies are reorganized and restructured.As such, the class will focus on how governments, whether national or local, in relation to different institutions such as NGOs, corporations, and others, respond to processes of migration in different ways, giving way for the emergence of policies and programs that welcome migrants or further push exclusionary measures. The course further aims to place the fields of migration and urban studies as mutual, instead of separate. In doing so, we will scrutinize the conceptualizations of integration and the depictions of native/migrant binaries. Students can expect to learn and engage with concepts on scale, emplacement, displacement, and dispossession. With the engagement of theoretical and empirical examples, this class emphasizes the historical perspective in analysing contemporary framing of migration and cities. This course is seminar style. Students will be expected to read all of the materials and come to class prepared to participate in discussions, ask questions, and critically engage with the text. Students will be expected to give presentations, initiate discussions based on the assigned materials, and pose questions on Moodle each week.