Content, progress and pedagogy of the module

Objectives 

• To introduce legal frameworks concerning refugees and facilitate basic legal literacy
• To situate legal frameworks within international institutions and organizations
• To explore how the refugee has become central for the emergence and challenge to the nation-state
• To understand how the refugee conceptually and empirically enters discourses and politics around humanitarianism and security.

Content 

This course asks a simple question: What is a refugee? The answer turns out to be complex and needs to be explored through an interdisciplinary approach comprising the most salient and advanced legal and social science studies relating to refugees. The module is divided into a legal and a social science part. In the first, legal part of the course, we focus on introducing the legal conventions around refugees and displacement. The aim is to enhance students’ legal literacy, understanding legal categories, languages and their institutionalization in international and national organizations and states. In the second part of the module, we explore how these legal categories have entered into the social lives of nation-states and people. It explores different theoretical perspectives on refugees and immigrants from the perspective of political philosophy, social science, and anthropology.  The overall idea behind this part of the module is that we start from a birds-eye perspective by investigating how refugees and migrants are governed in today’s world by sovereign nation-states, humanitarian organizations and public and private industries. The central aims are: 1) to introduce central concepts and theoretical discussions within studies of refugees 2) to enhance the students’ analytical and critical skills and 3) to equip students with multidisciplinary tools they can use to engage in problem-based learning processes.

Learning objectives

Knowledge

• Legal literacy of refugee protection and knowledge of legal processes
• Theoretical, methodological, and applied approaches to socio-legal, philosophical, and anthropological studies of refugees
• Latest state of the art in research within the field of displacement and refugee studies.

Skills

• can apply relevant theories and methodologies to empirical case studies.
• can reflect critically on theories and policy models in various parts of the world and contexts. 
• can apply legal and social science theories and understand the epistemological differences.

Competences

• can reflect and argue on the basis of scientific knowledge.
• can reflect on the interphase between legal and socio-political processes.
• can relate a research problem to real life settings and deploy a specific methodology to solve a research or policy puzzle.

Type of instruction

The module will rely on a mixed teaching and learning technique. Examples include lectures, seminars, student contributions and presentations, exercises, reflection groups, and role-playing scenarios.  

Exam

Exams