IR395      Half Unit
The Politics of Displacement and Refuge

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The number of forcibly displaced people has nearly doubled in the last decade.  Amid this rise in forced migration, how are states, international organisations, and local communities responding? What is causing this increase in displacement and what are the political consequences - both in the Global North and the Global South? What are the everyday realities of being forcibly displaced? This course takes on these questions as we examine the politics of displacement and the evolution of the global asylum and refugee protection regime.

The course begins with an overview of the historical and legal origins of the asylum and refugee protection regime, including who qualifies as a refugee and asylum-seeker under international law and why. We then explore the disconnect between this foundation and the realities of displacement and mobility today. The course continues with an analysis of the causes and consequences of displacement, followed by an examination of the evolution of state, international and local responses to asylum-seeking. Throughout the course we pay particular attention to the politics of refugee and IDP hosting in the Global South, where the majority of displaced persons live, as well as refugees' and migrants' own perspectives on the experience and politics of displacement.

By the end of the course students will be able to articulate complex issues related to forced migration and global asylum governance; synthesize and critique scholarly work from a variety of disciplines - including political science, sociology, and anthropology; and analyze the causes of displacement and state responses to asylum-seeking.

10 hours of lectures and 15.5 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Students can choose between one of two formative coursework options:

Option 1: Students can produce a case study proposal and a class presentation in the Autumn Term (AT).

Option 2: Students can produce an essay outline in tandem with a volunteer posting (this formative coursework option is available only if the student secures a volunteering position previously agreed with the course convener).

Both of these assessments will elicit feedback to aid the student in the preparation of the summative case study submission.

• Hannah Arendt. “We Refugees” (1943)
• Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena et al., eds. Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014.
• Greenhill KM (2010) Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy. Cornell studies in security affairs. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
• Steele A (2017) Democracy and Displacement in Colombia’s Civil War. Cornell University Press.
• Gammeltoft-Hansen T (2011) Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation of Migration Control. Cambridge studies in international and comparative law. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Nguyen, V.T. ed., 2018. The displaced: Refugee writers on refugee lives. Abrams
• Tinti, P. and Reitano, T., 2018. Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Saviour. Oxford University Press.

Assessment Pathway 1

Course participation (20%)

Case analysis / study (80%, 2500 words)

Assessment Pathway 2

Course participation (20%)

Essay (80%, 2500 words)

Students can choose one of two summative assessment paths listed above due in the January Assessment Period.