GEOG 4024. Seminar in Globalization
Dynamics in Globalization: Human Mobility and Security
Recent migration ‘crises’ around the world, the global pandemics, and the range of discourses, policies, laws, and practices that have followed call attention to human mobility regulation as a standout globalization issue. Security, in its many dimensions, is often quoted in support of migration regulation. How do mobility and security interplay across space, and what kind of agents and structures make migration the complex and powerful phenomenon that underscores globalization? Whose mobility and security are at stake? What challenges, tensions, and opportunities arise from how societies govern people’s movement, and the ideas and social capital that come with them? What social transformations are on the horizon and how do we think of them in view of mobility?
This course looks into the relationship between migration and security in global times, offering an interactive format to explore globalization from the standpoint of mobility and its regulation across different spaces. Particular attention will be given to narratives, the power they encode, and the emotion they caption when analyzing contemporary and historical anxieties towards mobility, (ir)regular migration & walls, comfort zones & exceptional spaces, migrant & asylum rights, integration & inclusion, citizenship & nationalisms, and other matters societies are and will be confronted with in relation to mobility (e.g. climate change, technological developments etc.).
Students will be engaged in an interdisciplinary intellectual exercise in support of mapping out, and deepening understanding of, global connections (or lack thereof) that the governance of migration reveals. The goal is to challenge how we think about globalization through the lens of mobility and its regulation.
All materials for this course are available and free of charge online. The course will be offered online.