300053 Politics of Migration in Western Europe (S) (SoSe 2013)

Contemporary European studies have been challenged by a number of topics and questions related to the relationship of European countries and the many colours of their population generated through migration flows. This course considers current debates about politics of migration from a variety of perspectives, both empirical and normative. It aims to provide students with an understanding of how Europe and its countries have responded to immigration and how their politics of migration has conditioned these responses. The course will frame migration related issues at individual member states as well as European Union scale. At the end it is aimed that students will have developed an understanding of the conceptual issues associated with politics of migration will have acquired a sound knowledge of the historical background to the contemporary debates.
Seminars (seminar design can be rescheduled)
The course is designed to be taught by fifteen (15) sessions. Week 7 and 15 will be discussion sessions for presentations while the other seminars will cover of 2 term-hour sessions. In the introductory week a redesign can also be negotiated for some block seminars in converging max. two weeks.
In this seminar „Interactive learning‟ is the key method. Every student should come to the seminars having read the essential readings and having prepared two questions from readings to enrich the discussions.
Evaluation and Grading:
The course linchpin is to motivate academic discussion on topics widely discussed in public in addition to academic realm. To do this ATTENDANCE and ACTIVE participation based on weekly readings on part of participants is quintessential in addition to written homework requirements. A mixed method of short presentation and essays OR presentation and term paper will be introduced. A provisional point distribution is as follows:
% 30 Active Participation
% 20 Presentations
% 50 Papers (2 short essays or 1 long Term Paper)
Weekly Plan
1. Introduction
2. What do we understand of politics of migration? How does it fail?
3. Effects of Migration policy
4. and 5. History of Migration and Integration in Western Europe
6. Recent Debates: Management of Ethno-Cultural Diversity
7. Discussion and Presentations
8. Securitisation of Migration in Europe
9. Theories and Modes of Citizenship
10. Managing Diversity: Integration, Inclusion and Intercultural Dialogue
11. Migrants as Political Actors I
12. Migrants as Political Actors II
13. Situation of Migrants in Labour Market
14. Islam in Europa
15. Discussion and Presentation