| Bemerkung: |
In Europe, the “summer of migration 2015” has spurred various processes of rebordering – the refinement of existing and the deployment of new methods of border control. Some of these measures raise important questions for social scientific inquiry: Can the erection of walls and other physical barriers really bring migration to a halt? What does the outsourcing of border controls beyond geopolitical demarcation lines – for instance through dubious agreements with transit countries like Turkey or Libya – imply for our understanding of borders? In how far does the establishment of transnational spaces by migrants, fuelled by new modes of communication and transport, call for a reconceptualization of migration beyond its understanding as movement from one national container to another one? And why are migration levels increasing despite the fact that most governments have adopted a harsh anti-migration rhetoric in the past two decades?
By engaging with these and other migration-related questions and debates students will be introduced to the field of International Political Sociology (IPS) and cutting-edge debates of border and migration studies. In brief, IPS scholarship seeks to transcend the deeply entrenched traditional boundaries between sociology and political science, on the one hand, and IR theory, on the other hand. Traditionally, all these disciplines (used to) define their respective fields of study along the inside/outside distinction of nation-state borders. Thus, the seminar seeks to open up an intellectual space to think about migration beyond the established parameters of policy and media discourses which frame migration either as a security issue, an economic asset or a humanitarian concern. |
