Politics of Migration and Security
Etablissement : ESPOL European School of Political and Social Sciences
Langue : Anglais
Formation(s) dans laquelle/lesquelles le cours apparait :
Période : S6
This course examines the political logics, institutions, and practices that shape the contemporary governance of migration and security. It approaches migration not simply as the movement of people across borders, but as an arena structured by categories, expert knowledges, risk assessments, security rationalities, humanitarian practices, and technologies of surveillance. Students will explore how states, international organisations, and non-state actors mobilise discourses of threat, crisis, protection, and management to categorise mobile populations and justify interventions.
Throughout, the course foregrounds questions central to PPE:
- How do institutions justify and exercise power over mobility?
- What are the economic, moral, and political implications of border controls?
- How is migration framed as a security issue, and with what consequences?
- What models of justice and responsibility apply to global mobility?
The course equips students with the analytical tools to critically evaluate how migration and security intersect in contemporary politics, and to reflect on possible alternatives.
Session one: Categorising Migration and Security
Required reading: Zetter, R. (2007). More labels, fewer refugees: Remaking the refugee label in an era of globalization. Journal of refugee studies, 20(2), 172-192.
Session two: Migration and security
Required reading: Bigo, D. (2002). Security and immigration: Toward a critique of the governmentality of unease. Alternatives, 27(1_suppl), 63-92.
Session three: Bordering Dynamics
Required reading: Rumford, C. (2016). Towards a multiperspectival study of borders. In Critical border studies (pp. 161-176). Routledge.
Session four: How migration governance is built beyond borders: Europeanisation & externalisation
Required reading: Lavenex, S. (2006). Shifting up and out: The foreign policy of European immigration control. West European Politics, 29(2), 329-350.
Session five: Expert knowledge and migration management
Required reading: Boswell, C. (2008). The political functions of expert knowledge: Knowledge and legitimation in European Union immigration policy. Journal of European public policy, 15(4), 471-488.
Session six: Migration and the humanitarian-security nexus
Required reading: Walters, W. (2010). Foucault and frontiers: Notes on the birth of the humanitarian border. In Governmentality (pp. 146-172). Routledge.
Session seven: Economics and public attitudes towards migration
Guest lecturer: Jérôme Gonnot, Espol
Required reading: Dražanová, L., Gonnot, J., Heidland, T., & Krüger, F. (2024). Which individual-level factors explain public attitudes toward immigration? A meta-analysis. Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 50(2), 317-340.
Session eight: Migration and Crisis Governance
Required reading: De Genova, N. P. (2016). The “crisis” of the European border regime: Towards a Marxist theory of borders. International Socialism, (150), 31-54.
Session nine: Migration, technology and security solutions
Required reading: Amoore, L. (2006). Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror. Political geography, 25(3), 336-351.
Session ten: Images and imaginaries of migration
Required reading: Fine, S., & Walters, W. (2022). No place like home? The International Organization for Migration and the new political imaginary of deportation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(13), 3060-3077.
Session eleven: The Politics of Migration and Security in the Case of Turkey
Required reading: Isleyen, B. (2018). Turkey’s governance of irregular migration at European Union borders: Emerging geographies of care and control. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(5), 849-866.
Session twelve: The Ethics of Border Control
Required reading: Carens, J. H. (1987). Aliens and citizens: the case for open borders. The review of politics, 49(2), 251-273.
