Studiegids

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Migration and Integration

Vak
2012-2013

Admission requirements

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Description

Contemporary migration and the political debates around this theme can profit greatly from a historical perspective by means of balanced and structured comparisons in time and place.
European migration history clearly differs from that of the US and other parts of the world. However, many theories on migration and ethnicity have been developed in an American context. In this course we will direct our attention towards theories that can explain migration history and its consequences in a European context. In earlier decades migration was mostly explained from an economic perspective. Recently more attention has been paid to individual and family choices, agency, and networks. It has also been acknowledged that migration and integration are strongly gendered phenomena. The course will include a discussion of these more recent theoretical views. In this introductory course we will focus on the history of European migration. We begin with migration in the Early Modern Period and continue our study to the present day. Students will study the causes and consequences of migration. The course not only deals with migration itself, but also with the integration of immigrants in the host societies. Furthermore, it also considers the effects of migration on the sending societies.

Course objectives

After completing this course the student has a good overview of the most important (interdisciplinary) theoretical and conceptual approaches off the (global) history of migration and integration. And also of processes of in- and exclusion. Furthermore the student is able to make structured comparisons between various countries and different historical periods. The student learns how to reconstruct and analyse developments over time. Finally the student is able to express him/herself in writing in a systematic, coherent and meaningful way, combining secondary literature on specific cases and theoretical frameworks.

Timetable

See here.

Mode of instruction

Literature seminar.

Assessment method

Paper
Students will write a final essay for the last meeting on a topic of choice (for which they will find extra literature).
The final essay will include references to the literature read for the first part of the course. The final essay can be in English or Dutch, has to be 8000 words and has to include references (De Buck style).

Blackboard

No

Reading list

1) Buy or lend:

  • Alba, Richard D. & Victor Nee, Remaking the American mainstream: assimilation and contemporary migration (Cambridge Mass, Harvard University Press 2003).

  • Lucassen, Leo, The immigrant threat: the integration of old and new migrants in western Europe since 1850 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press 2005).

  • Manning, Patrick, Migration in world history (New York Routledge 2005).

  • McKeown, A. Melancholy order: Asian migration and the globalization of borders (New York, Columbia University Press 2008).

2) Copy or pdf’s

The rest of the literature will be distributed at the beginning of the class.

Registration

via uSis.

Contact information

Email: Prof. dr. L.A.C.J. Lucassen

Remarks

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