240039 SE BM7 Defining and Governing Forced Migration (2026S)

Description and Aims: Faced with wars, climate change, and rising social and economic disparities and political violence eroding livelihoods, an increasing number of people are forced to move within and cross borders. While the displaced are designated in varying ways as refugees, internally displaced, undocumented migrants, asylum seekers, these terminologies situate these migrants differently in the public imaginaries as well as in policies and scholarship. This course aims to provide a critical perspective on forced population movements, their dynamics, actors, and conceptualisation in scholarship and policies. Such a perspective requires the scrutinization of the differential ordering and management of migrants, refugees, displaced people, forced migrants, and the undocumented in scholarship and policies. The course places a particular emphasis on the importance of colonialism and the coloniality of power shaping the dynamics of forced migration.

Structure: Seminars will begin with a short lecture by the instructor framing the readings and will be followed by a short presentation/introduction of that week’s topic, in which the students responsible for that week will present the readings structured by their critical comments and questions. The students are very much encouraged to think the readings through the lens of current events and debates they are familiar with. The students’ introduction will be followed by a discussion, where the instructor will lead the students to work out the convergences but also divergencies between the readings and unpack the conceptual network of these texts. For each session there will be two or three key required texts. It is important that the presenters include examples from their environment and make connections to the readings of the former weeks. There is a strong emphasis on active class participation.

Learning Outcomes: At the end of the course, the students are expected to have: a global perspective on forced migration and its multifarious dynamics; an understanding of its conceptual network, its emergence and its historical and political trajectories; the impact of colonialism and post-colonial predicament in such displacements.