Module description
This module for students in the final year of their BA degree will explore how large-scale immigration had a transformative effect on the development of European societies. The perceived inability of the European Union as well as states neighbouring it to pre-empt terrorist threats and stem migration flows has helped fuel the rise of new parties and social movements that have put established institutions under considerable pressure. This course will therefore focus on how changing public attitudes towards immigration have reshaped policy areas of fundamental importance to the security and stability of the EU. In the process it will provide students with a deeper insight into tensions between and within EU member states over crucial immigration-related issues such as terrorism and crime, the political role of transnational diasporas, the social integration of immigrants, citizenship law or the coordination of border controls. Through the use of a wide range of archival, press and audio-visual sources, students will have the opportunity to develop a better understanding of how social dynamics of mass immigration have come to influence fraught debates over civic and national identity in European states.
*Please note that module information is provisional and may change from year to year.
Suitable for UAM Students
Assessment details
One 2500 Word Reflective Essay (100%)
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate
- Detailed awareness of the main theoretical debates that have shaped the study of the impact of immigration on contemporary Europe.
- Key critical skills necessary to apply theory to the analysis of a range of political conflicts and current debates surrounding the integration of immigrants in European states.
- New perspectives on how the securitisation of state borders shapes political and social identities.
- The ability to draw critically on their own personal experience of free movement of people within the European Union and crossing borders beyond it to explore debates over immigration, security and identity.
- A command of the interdisciplinary as well as disciplinary methods of analysis appropriate to the study of key social, political and economic developments in contemporary Europe.
- An ability to refine their judgement by close reading of diverse primary sources and by the reading of a wide range of secondary literature.
- An ability to present their views in discussion and in written form in response to current issues in German politics.
Teaching pattern
Two hours per week, one lecture and one seminar
Suggested reading list
Sample of Recommended Literature
- Rosenblum, Marc R/Tichenor, Daniel J. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012.
- Lucassen, Leo, The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 2005.
- Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoglu, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994.
- Clarkson, Alexander, Fragmented Fatherland: Immigration and Cold War Conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1980, New York, Berghahn Books, 2013.
- Spencer, Sarah, The Migration Debate, Policy Press, Bristol, 2011.
- Ayhan, Kaya, Islam, Migration and Integration: the Age of Securitization, Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
- Vaughan-Williams, Nick, Border Politics: the Limits of Sovereign Power, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2012