The Global Politics of Migration and Mobilities

3 Credits.

From pirates to settlers, enslaved people to nomads, tourists to migrants, global politics are made by the overlapping routes of people on the move, and by attempts to put some people on the move, while containing others in place. In an international world order of nation-states constituted through histories of mobility, questions of movement are amongst the most pressing political issues facing students of international relations. The course will explore some of these questions through engagement with academic texts as well as fiction, film, and archival materials, to ask: What does the study of world politics look like if movement is treated as a primary rather than an exceptional condition? How do contemporary regimes of (im)mobility function to put some people on the move, and attempt to contain others in place? How do processes of colonization and decolonization unfold through questions of mobility? How are questions of belonging framed in relation to movement and stasis, for example, in relation to those rendered ‘migrants’ and ‘natives’?