Climate Change, Migration and Social Control VU Graduate Winter School

Climate Change, Migration and Social Control

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This course examines migration control policies, including labor market access and deportation, to understand acceptance and rejection in Europe. It covers climate refugees, racialised group integration, and advanced control methods. Organisational processes for inclusive societies amid climate change are emphasized. Students can explore topics like migration enforcement, freedom of movement, labour rights, refugee status, and identity in mobility.

Climate-induced migration is an urgent topic of research and policy triggering hot debates around border control, detention and deportation, labour market inclusion, and refugees’ recognition. Policymakers, civil society, and academics have reached some corners in assessing how people on the move are perceived, managed, or rejected by host societies.

This course focuses on migration control policies and practices, from access to the labor market to deportation measures in order to investigate who is more likely to be welcomed (or rejected) from Europe and why. The course dives deep into scholarly discussions on the refugees’ recognition (who’s a climate refugee?), (differentiated) integration of racialized groups, and methods of migration control (e.g., smart borders). Special attention is paid to the processes of organizing at different international, national, and local levels that respond to the needs of more inclusive societies in an era of mass mobility and climate change.

Bringing together sensitive aspects of migration control, the course encourages students to challenge their understanding of migration and state borders, as well as the role of organizations in shaping our understanding of mobility. The course offers students the chance to focus on their own subject within the field of migration management, choosing between enforcement of migration control, moral and legal debates on the freedom of movement, labour rights and social provisions for non-citizens, refugees’ legal status, or the hierarchization of identities during cross-border mobility.

Continue reading below for additional course information.

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Dr. Ioana Vrăbiescu is a Senior Assistant Professor at VU Amsterdam. She works on the intersection of climate change and human and non-human forced mobility (PI, Engaged Scholarship against Climate Change / ESCC-Water), focusing on India and the role of ethical emotions in migration control. Previously, she was a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research (NY) and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warwick and the University of Amsterdam. She conducted multi-sited fieldwork alongside the policing and deportation apparatus in France, the UK, and Romania, and ethnographic research with social services and organisations for migration management in Spain. She is a member of several professional networks, such as DAMR (Dutch Association for Migration Research), Migration and Diversity Research Centre (VU), ReSCU Lab, EASA, H-Migration.

Learning objectives
At the end of the course:
The student will have acquired knowledge and understanding of:
- The intertwined role of various decision-makers in public and private organizations who shape identities and ethics or implement laws that regulate migration in Europe.
- The multifaced dynamics between migration, identities and labour organization
- Debates around the current strategies and policies for migrants’ inclusion/exclusion.
The student has acquired the competencies to:
- Analyse several aspects and insights from various perspectives to specific case studies pertaining to the identities shaped during cross-border mobility and in the labour market.
- Take multiple, sometimes opposing interests into account when addressing problems such as migration laws and state borders, perceived identities, or organizational change.
The student demonstrates:
- A critical attitude towards the theory and practice of migration control, based on the assigned literature and the lectures.
- Ability to build an argument in support of a migration management strategy that is based on ethical grounds and aims to improve as much possible human livelihoods.
The student has acquired the skills to:
- Formulate critical questions in relation to literature and case studies presented in the course.
- Present in a creative form a team product that reveals the knowledge acquired or opens-up new debates in the field.
- Express knowledge and insights obtained in this course by writing a well-grounded essay.
Forms of tuition and assessment
1. Classroom teaching
- Six interactive lectures / 5 by the main teacher + 1 guest lecturer
- Workload 14 hours
- Participation counts 10%
1. Reading time (self-study)
- Workload 36 hours
1. Group assignment at the end of week 1 (day 5)
- In groups of 3-4 students prepare a 10’ presentation on an elective topic
- Workload 14 hours
- The format should be media diverse: blogpost, podcast, video, etc.
- The feedback received from the teacher, but peer-grading is applied for this assignment
- Criteria: critical position, argumentation, creativity in the message’s format
- Weight of the assignment 20%
1. Individual written assignment at the end of week 2 (day 10)
- 1500 words academic essay
- Assessment procedure: grade 6 is minimum to pass
- Workload 20 hours
- Weight of the assignment 70%
Course syllabus

Here you will find a detailed description of the course, timetables, readings and more more information for 2023. We will provide an updated version of the syllabus closer to the starting date.
^{*Some information may be subject to change. We will provide an updated version of the syllabus closer to the starting date.}