Migration and the (Inter-)National Order of Things

Law, State Practices and Resistance

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Course leaders: Maja Janmyr, Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Law, UiB, and Marry-Anne Karlsen, Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK), UiB

This interdisciplinary course aims to deepen the understanding of the politics of protection and control of contemporary migration. It asks: How are migrants given different bureaucratic and legal identities (e.g. refugees, stateless persons, irregular migrants) and what are the consequences of such distinctions and labels? What protection does international law and humanitarian institutions offer to different categories of people? What are the spatial, temporal and gendered implications of the protection and control practices aimed at migrants? And, how are the legal and bureaucratic identities, and institutions of migration control, challenged by migrants themselves?

This course introduces PhD candidates to key concepts, cross-cutting research and analysis in the fields of law, anthropology, human geography and political science. It offers lectures by leading migration scholars, student presentations, role plays, film screenings and a possibility of writing an academic paper, enabling the participant to earn 10 credits.

Please refer to the BSRS programme for common BSRS sessions

Course programme

Course literature

Al Husseini J. and Bocco, R. “The Status of the Palestinian Refugees in the Near East: The right of return and UNRWA in perspective”, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 28, Nos 2 & 3 (2009), pp. 260-285.

Arendt, H. “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man”, Ch 9 in Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism (1966), pp.267-302.

Bendixsen, S., “Voice Matters: Calling for Victimhood, Shared Humanity and Citizenry of Irregular Migrants in Norway”, in Gonzales R. & Sigona N. (eds.) Within and Beyond Citizenship. Borders, Membership and Belonging, (Routledge, 2017), pp. 185-207.

Carens, J. H. “Aliens and Citizens: the case for open borders” The Review of Politics, Vol 49, No. 2 (1987), pp. 251-273.

Goodwin-Gill, G. “The International Law of Refugee Protection”, in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Loescher, G., Long, K., & Sigona, N. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014) pp. 1-16.

Hinger, S., Schäfer, P., & Pott, A.,“The Local Production of Asylum”, Journal of Refugee Studies (2016) doi: 10.1093/jrs/few029.

Hyndman, J. & Giles, W., “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations”, Gender, Place & Culture, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2011), pp. 361-379.

Janmyr, M., “No Country of Asylum: Legitimizing Lebanon’s Rejection of the 1951 Refugee Convention” [forthcoming 2017].

Knudsen, A. J. “Camp, Ghetto, Zinco, Slum: Lebanon’s Transitional Zones of Emplacement”, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Vol. 7 No. 3 (2016), pp. 443-457.

Plambech, S., “Sex, Deportation and Rescue: Economies of Migration among Nigerian Sex Workers” Feminist Economics (2016), pp. 1-26. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13545701.2016.1181272

Stevens D., “Shifting Conceptions of Refugee Identity and Protection: European and Middle Eastern Approaches”, in Kneebone S., Stevens, D., & Baldassar, L., Refugee Protection and the Role of Law: conflicting identities (Routledge, 2014), pp. 73-97.

Recommended literature

Agamben, G. “We refugees”, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, Vol. 49 No. 2 (1995) pp. 114-119.

Andersson, R., “Time and The Migrant Other: European Border Controls and The Temporal Economics of Illegality”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 116 No. 4 (2014), pp. 795-809.

Feldman, I., “Difficult Distinctions: Refugee Law, Humanitarian Practice, and Political Identification in Gaza” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 22 No. 1 (2007), pp. 129-169.

Hopkins, D. J., “Politicized places: Explaining where and when immigrants provoke local opposition”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 104 No. 01 (2010), pp. 40-60.

Janmyr, M. & Knudsen, A., Special Issue on Humanitarianism in Refugee Camps in Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Vol. 7 No. 3 (2016).

Karlsen, M.A. “Migration Control and Migrant Children’s Access to Healthcare” in Thomas, F. (ed.) Handbook of Migration and Health (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2016) pp. 134-157.

Martin, D., “From Spaces of Exception to ‘Campscapes’: Palestinian refugee camps and informal settlements in Beirut” Political Geography Vol. 44 (2015) 9-18.

McNevin, A., “Political Belonging in a Neoliberal Era: The struggle of the sans-papiers” Citizenship Studies, Vol. 10 No. 2 (2006), pp. 135-151.

Noll, G. “Why Human Rights Fail to Protect Undocumented Migrants”, European Journal of Migration and Law, Vol. 12 No. 2 (2010), pp. 241-272.

Nyer, P., “No one is Illegal between City and Nation”, Studies in Social Justice, Vol 4 No. 2 (2010) pp. 127-143.

Plambech, S., “Becky is Dead: The Death of a Migrant” (2016) https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/sine-plambech/becky-is-dead

Plambech, S., “The Art of the Possible: Making films on sex work migration and human trafficking” Anti-Trafficking Review (2016) DOI: 10.14197/atr.201217710

Stevens, D., “Rights, Needs or Assistance? The Role of the UNHCR in Refugee Protection in the Middle East”, International Journal of Human Rights Vol. 20 No. 2 (2016), pp. 264-283.

Zagor, M. “The Struggle of Autonomy and Authenticity: framing the savage refugee”, Social Identities, Vol. 21 No. 4 (2015), pp. 373-394.

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Refugee Law Reader, section II, pp. 47-136: http://refugeelawreader.org/images/Syllabus-2015-02-27-US-WEB.pdf

The 1951 Convention/1967 Protocol: http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.pdf