Transnational Movement in the Age of Globalisation

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• employ social theory in high-level analysis of social trends
• demonstrate and apply your understanding of how established scholarly approaches produce different kinds of interpretations of national and transnational experiences, to an advanced level
• interpret and reflect critically, at an advanced level, on a range of global case studies
• demonstrate confidence and skill when engaging in high-level academic discussion and debate
• communicate a high-level academic argument in written and oral form
• evaluate advanced theoretical approaches to migration, identity, globalisation and the transnational

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• reach an advanced level of global and cultural awareness
• communicate complex, advanced ideas and arguments in an essay format
• engage in advanced debate around complex, high-level ideas and theories
• communicate advanced, complex ideas and arguments orally
• manage deadlines and make effective use of your time
• identify, select and draw upon a wide range of printed and electronic sources
• engage in high-level analysis of case studies and arguments

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• a broad range of high-level conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of transnational practices and networks, from a range of disciplines
• advanced conceptualisations, theories and debates around globalisation, migration, identity and culture
• working and thinking globally and across cultures, at an advanced level
• how culture manifests and is disseminated through global exchange and encounter, at an advanced level

Typically the syllabus will cover:

– migration research in historical perspective

– the effects of the 'transnational turn' in miragtion studies

– transnational perspectives on 'culture,' 'place' and 'identity'

– the different implications of empirical research on transnational networks

– conceptual and methodological issues in researching globalisation and migration

You will explore these areas, and the relationships between them, using case studies from the USA, Latin America, Africa and Europe. The module will thereby allow you to explore major political and social issues in colonial, metropolitan and postcolonial societies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Teaching and learning methods

Lectures, seminars and individual tutorials, alongside in-depth independent study.

Resources & Reading list

Journal Articles

Basch, Linda & Nina G. Schiller (1995). From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorising Transnational Migration. Anthropological Quarterly, 68(1), pp. 48-63.

Levitt, Peggy (2001). Transnational Migration: Taking Stock and Future Directions. Global Networks, 1(3), pp. 195-216.

Appadurai, Arjun (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Public Culture, 2(1), pp. 1-24.

Wimmer, A., and Glick Schiller, N. (2003). Methodological nationalism, the social sciences and the study of migration: an essay in historical epistemology. International Migration Review, 37, pp. 576-610.

Textbooks

Lundstrom, C. (2014). White Migrations: Gender, Whiteness and Privilege in Transnational Migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Lin, Xiadong (2013). Gender, Modernity and Male Migrant Workers in China. London: Routledge.

Smith, Robert Courtney. Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants.

Vertovec, Steven (2009). Transnationalism.

Brubaker, Rogers (2004). Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External