The department is a lively community that is recognised internationally as one of the top centres for research and teaching in development studies.
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Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Mayur Patel, DPhil 2011
Froilan Malit Jr
Visiting Fellow, King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies
Year(s):
2011
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12
Over the past decade, I have dedicated my entire professional career to studying Gulf migration politics and policies impacting low-income migrant workers in the Middle East.
As a visiting fellow (incoming) at King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies, I will specialize in migration diplomacy, labor rights, and labor governance linked to the Gulf's kafala sponsorship system, focusing on the Philippine-Gulf relations. Oxford's MSc in Migration Studies program has strategically given me the necessary framework to understand global migration dynamics, specifically in the Global South, and work with institutions that directly shape regional migration systems in the Middle East.
My academic training at Oxford has prepared me to work as a technical consultant for migrant-sending states, civil society organizations, and various regional and international institutions, including the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, International Organization for Migration (IOM), and International Labor Organization (ILO), where I currently serve as a committee advisory member of the ILO Regional Office for Arab States's Migration Advisory Group (MAG) in the Middle East.
These academic and government postings have also profoundly inspired me to establish the Rights Corridor (www.rightscorridor.com) in 2019, a virtual educational platform that focuses on labor migration and rights issues in the Asia-Middle East migration corridor.
I chose the MSc in Migration Studies because of its multidisciplinary scholarly training, combined with excellent access to the world's top migration scholars and experts and unparalleled resources and intellectual environment at Oxford. More specifically, I particularly valued the dissertation-supervising component of the MSc in Migration Studies program. It enabled me to learn from and work closely with a global faculty expert and deeply explore cutting-edge research questions linked to contemporary migration politics issues, often with real-life policy implications on migrant populations in the Global South.
Overall, the MSc in Migration Studies has become an essential foundation for my decade-long academic and government careers, as well as a vital global institutional space for young researchers seeking to contribute to academic and policy engagements linked to contemporary international migration debates.
The MSc in Migration Studies has become ... a vital global institutional space for young researchers seeking to contribute to academic and policy engagements linked to contemporary international migration debates.