To Geography majors:

I hope that you had a good winter break and wish you a Happy New Year!

This Spring semester I will offer a new course on The Age of Migration (GEOG 444). It will be taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:40-1:55 pm in BGB 101. There are no prerequisites for the course. 

The ‘Age of Migration’ refers to the unprecedented mobility of labor migrants, family migrants, and refugees (Castles and Miller 2015). Governments have liberalized their migration policies to admit more workers with desirable skills. At the same time, politicians and governments try to balance humanitarian concerns with the desire to control the admission of immigrants. This debate has intensified under the Syrian refugee crisis, as politicians disagree on the number of refugees to admit and the services to be provided. In these debates, few policymakers take the larger geopolitical issues into account that have contributed to the current refugee situation.

 

In this class, we will take a global, national, and local perspective on international migration, grounding migration issues in contemporary migration theories. In particular, this course addresses family migration, labor migration, retirement migration, forced migration (including the current refugee crisis and environmental refugees), and undocumented migration. At the end of the semester, we will discuss the (lack of) global governance and future perspectives on international migration.

For more information, please contact Dr. van Riemsdijk at [log in to unmask] or stop by my office in BGB 309.

If you are interested in learning about international migration in the field, I can recommend my study abroad course in Oslo and London that will be held from June 8 – July 2 2017. More information is available at http://geography.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Age-of-Migration-2017.pdf

Best,

Dr. van Riemsdijk