SP410      Half Unit
Migration: Current Research, Critical Approaches

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This interdisciplinary course addresses contemporary global migration issues with reference to both developing and developed country contexts, and to different patterns and forms of migration. The course examines the relationship between migration and social and public policies, including the implications for how migrants and migration are conceptualised, for inequalities in the movement of people, for welfare systems, and for the impacts of migration in countries of origin and destination. Teaching across the course integrates critical theoretical approaches to migration with applications using different migration-related research methods.

15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

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

All teaching will be in accordance with the LSE Academic Code which specifies a minimum of two hours taught contact time per week when the course is running in the Autumn Term (AT) and/or Winter Term (WT). Social Policy courses are predominantly taught through a combination of in-person lectures and In person classes/seminars. Further information will be provided by the Course Convenor in the first lecture of the course.

Essay (1200 words) in Autumn Term Week 8

Students are expected to participate actively in seminars and course activities, to prepare a group presentation, and to write a formative essay.

There will also be a formative 'exhibition' to which students will be invited to contribute.

• Castles, de Haas & Miller (2013) The Age of Migration;
• Shachar (2009) The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality.
• Migali, S. and Scipioni, M. (2019) “Who’s About to Leave? A Global Survey of Aspirations and Intentions to Migrate.” International Migration, 57: 181-200.
• Lee, J. et al. (2014) "The International Migration Review at 50: Reflecting on Half a Century of International Migration Research and Looking Ahead", International Migration Review, 48: Anniversary Issue, S3–S36.
• Laczko, F.  and Aghazarm, C. (2009) Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence. Geneva: International Organization for Migration (IOM).
• Piper (ed) (2008) New Perspectives on Gender and Migration: Livelihood, Rights and Entitlements.
• Faist, Bilecen, Barglowski & Sienkiewicz (2015) "Transnational Social Protection: Migrants' Strategies and Patterns of Inequalities", Population, Space and Place, 21, 193-202.
• FitzGerald (2012) "A Comparativist Manifesto for International Migration Studies" Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35: 10, 1725-1740.
• Czaika, M. and De Haas, H. (2013) "The Effectiveness of Migration Policies", Population and Development Review, 39: 3, 487-508.

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Students will sit an in-person e-exam in the Spring Term. The exam will be 3 hours, and students will answer 2 questions from a set of 4. The upper word limit for the exam is 2400.