210081 SE BAK14: Gender and Politics (2019W)

Migration and asylum have dominated the political discourse in Europe, reaching a historical peak since the summer of 2015. This is not least evidenced in the most frequently reported topics in Austrian newspapers in 2017 and 2018: ‘migration', ‘asylum’ and 'integration'. Currently, migration is constructed as a main marker of political difference between competing political actors and projects (such as the liberal human rights discourse and the right-wing nationalist discourse on 'national security' regarding migration and migrants). In this seminar, we will treat the social construction of migration and migrants from a power-critical and intersectional political science perspective. The goal is to work out systematically how migration is constructed in political discourses and how migrants and their rights and freedoms are negotiated in there. The focus is on intersectional structures of inequality that result in aggravated marginalization for female migrants at the crossroads between gender, race, and class relations.

The structure of the seminar is designed to familiarize students with gender-critical political science research on migration. The seminar is therefore designed to cover the theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects of scientific work. Students are encouraged and asked to apply their acquired knowledge through in-class exercises and a final term paper.