GI432 Half Unit
Transnational perspectives on gender, borders and migration
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Dr Sharmila Parmanand
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Media and Culture, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security and MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
Students should apply by 10am UK time on Friday 26 September 2025. Offers will be made after 10am on this date and will continue until all places are filled.
Priority is given to home department students and then to those who have the course listed in their programme regulations who apply in the first 24-hours (by 10:00am, Friday 26 September 2025), space permitting. Please note the timing of your request within the first 24-hours will not impact chances of being accepted onto the course. Requests received after this timeframe, or outside option requests, will be allocated randomly if space remains.
Please do not email the Course Convenor with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place. Contact gender@lse.ac.uk with any queries.
Course content
Course overview:
This course offers a critical, interdisciplinary exploration of transnational migration through an intersectional gender lens. It challenges dominant understandings of migration and migration management by tracing how contemporary mobility is shaped by historical processes of colonialism and global inequalities. Students will engage with key debates in migration governance, including how distinctions such as “forced” vs. “voluntary” and “skilled” vs. “unskilled” migration are constructed and mobilised. The course pays particular attention to the role of borders as gendered, racialised, and classed technologies of control, and examines how citizenship functions as a system of inclusion and exclusion.
Throughout the course, students will engage with feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives to understand the complexities of labour migration, trafficking, refuge, and displacement. Students will also explore forms of resistance to bordering. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to critically analyse global migration systems and imagine more equitable alternatives.
Inclusivity:
This course takes a transnational perspective, drawing on theories and case studies from global north and global south contexts. Both gender studies and migration studies are interdisciplinary, and so the course will make use of sources from across a range of disciplines (such as sociology, social policy, history, politics, development, economics, etc.) and that make use of a range of methodologies (mixed methods, quantitative methods, ethnographic methods, etc.).
Teaching
15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
Formative assessment
Essay (1500 words) in Winter Term Week 7
Indicative reading
Anderson, Bridget and Shutes, Isabel, eds. 2014. Migration and care labour: theory, policy and politics. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan.
Andrews, A. L. 2018. Undocumented politics: Place, gender, and the pathways of Mexican migrants. University of California Press.
Anghie, A. 2005. Imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law. Cambridge University Press.
Benería, L., Deere, D. C. and Kabeer, N. 2012. Gender and International Migration: Globalization, Development, and Governance. Feminist Economics, 18(2): 1-33.
Chávez, K. R. 2013. Queer migration politics: Activist rhetoric and coalitional possibilities. University of Illinois Press.
Chin, C. Cosmopolitan sex workers: Women and migration in a global city. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Farris, S. R. 2017. In the name of women's rights: The rise of femonationalism. Duke University Press.
Freedman, J., Latouche, A., Miranda, A., Sahraoui, N., Santana de Andrade, G., and Tyszler, E. (eds.). 2024. The Gender of Borders Embodied Narratives of Migration, Violence and Agency. Routledge.
Hall, Lucy and Cleton, Laura. 2025. Gendering Forced Migration. http://oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0327.xml
Parreñas, R. 2015. Servants of globalization: Migration and domestic work. Stanford University Press.
Walia, H., 2021. Border and Rule: Global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist nationalism. Haymarket books.
Assessment
Case analysis / study (100%) in May
Summative Essay
You are required to submit a recorded twenty-minute video presentation by Week 1 of Spring Term. Along with the recording, you must also submit your slides, references, and a transcript of your presentation. This presentation constitutes 100% of your overall mark for the course. The summative question will be released on the course Moodle at the end of WT Week 5.
Key facts
Department: Gender Studies
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
Keywords: gender, migration, borders, trafficking, labour, globalisation, development, diaspora, refugee
Total students 2024/25: Unavailable
Average class size 2024/25: Unavailable
Controlled access 2024/25: NoCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Leadership
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Application of numeracy skills
- Commercial awareness
- Specialist skills