950005 SE Migration: Boundaries, Borders, Barriers (2025W)

This course deals with different border regimes, its control mechanism, and patterns of migration and mobility from the early modern to modern times with a special emphasizes on Europe. The preoccupation with migration control on external borders began to accelerate in various parts of the world between the 1970s and 1990s. This process has run parallel to the process of globalization. Since the nineteenth century, globalization has brought a greater freedom of mobility to goods, services, capital and ideas. However, when it comes to mobility of people, the trend has been going in opposite directions since World War I. Especially since the 1990s, visa regimes and asylum policies have become increasingly more restrictive. Cross-border mobility seems to touch a very sensitive political nerve. The obsession with entry controls on external borders has found its newest expression in the systematic erection of steel and concrete fences and walls that stretch for hundreds, even thousands of kilometers in various parts of the world.
The broad aims of the course are to provide graduate students with an in-depth knowledge of the history of global border regimes within the complex and long-term process by which societies were transformed during modernity. The readings will be examined to identify the main historical themes, methodology and approaches taken in the reconstruction of border controls and identity constructions. As an outcome of the course, it is expected that students will have a broad overview of the history of border control and global migrations. They will have gained the research tools and interpretative skills to autonomously formulate research questions and should be able to write innovative research papers on the topic of migrations and border controls.