The course address two fundamental questions: (1) Is migration good for the economies of sending and receiving societies? and (2) How do local economies affect the prospect of migration? It introduces students to the tools used by neoclassical economists to answer these questions. Even students with no background in economics should be able to understand and, eventually, challenge current policy debates on migration. Among others, topics include competition and complementarity of migrants in labour markets; brain drain, gain, and circulation; and the role of remittances in family, community, and national development. In the process of learning about the benefits and weaknesses of a neoclassical economics approach to migration, students develop skills in relating these perspectives to concrete policy scenarios and outcomes.

This course explores the intersections of human mobility and the governance of people, places, and political processes. It fosters critical dialogue between theoretical and conceptual schema and emerging empirical dynamics from across the world’s regions. Two broad currents undergird these inquiries. The first explores theories of power, sovereignty, and space drawing on themes from political science, human geography, sociology and anthropology. The second considers sites where rapid mobility helps generate or transform the exercise of authority and regulation at multiple scales. The course emphasises world regions that may otherwise be unfamiliar to students or where contemporary political debates over human mobility provide a strong heuristic into broader processes of socio-political transformation. The case material is intended to foster comparative perspectives with the aim of challenging and contributing to the theorization of mobility, space and power.

This course aims to: (1) provide students with a sound understanding of how mobility and migration are studied anthropologically; and (2), delve into some of the key migration-related themes studied by contemporary anthropology. It moves across scales, from considering the historical, economic, and political conditions within which mobility and migration emerge as socially and culturally embedded practices to examining how mobility and migration come to be constituted as problems to be governed, are experienced subjectively and mobilised politically. The distinctive feature of anthropology is that it ties together micro-level analysis of experiences and practices of individuals and communities with macro-level analysis of economic and political formations.

This course serves to integrate the disciplinary insights introduced elsewhere as it thematically explores connections between human movement and ‘development’. Centred on the much-debated ‘migration-development nexus’, it uses this intersection to reconsider the meaning of modernity, progress, and global order. In so doing, it highlights imperial legacies, contemporary forms of inequality within and across societies, and the contentious politics of development. 

This two-part series familiarises students with common qualitative and quantitative research methods in the study of human movement. It introduces students to the tools needed to be a critical consumer and producer of social scientific data. Throughout the course, students will work concretely to develop their own research proposals and reflect on the position of researchers within global systems of knowledge generation and mobilisation.