121-415 Migrancy, Home and Exile

Students who have completed 121-026 The Mobile World are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

The accelerated speed, frequency and commonality of the movement of people through space is an increasingly ubiquitous feature of the modern world. Consequently, migration studies has developed as an established field of enquiry, encompassing disciplines such as anthropology, development studies, geography, sociology and political science. Its key shortcoming, however, rests in its exclusion of other forms of human movement or mobility. In contrast, drawing widely on examples from within and between the developed and developing worlds, this subject considers human mobility in the fullest sense, providing an understanding of the structural and experiential differences and commonalities between different kinds of human mobility, from the forced migration of refugees to the nomadism of Gypsies to the leisure migration of 'old aged travellers' for example. In so doing, it explores a number of related questions that are simultaneously empirical, theoretical and methodological: how do people move? Where do people move to? How have human mobility, its impact on places and the identity-making processes that mobile people engage in been theorized. Given that most social science methodologies have been designed to study situations of its opposite, fixity, what particular approaches are required to research and write about human mobility? Finally, and centrally, the subject's objectives are political in hue. By investigating how nation states legislate and police human mobility, it seeks to offer an understanding of how mobility is experienced as a form of home or exile.

• Independent research for essay preparation using a variety of media

• Exercise of critical judgement in written assignments and group discussion

Written work totalling 4000 words, comprising a 1000 word tutorial paper, 25% (due during semester) and one 3000 word essay, 75% (due at the end of week 9).

Brettell, C.B. and Hollifield, J.F. (2000) Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, New York and London: Routledge.