Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

The world is on the move. Migrants seeking better opportunities cross paths with refugees fleeing persecution. Some are helped and welcomed, many encounter barriers and threats, while identities, including class, race, gender, sexuality, mediate their prospects. This course's geographic perspective clarifies these complexities by combining conceptual analyses with contemporary cases.

COURSE DETAILS:

Throughout history, migration has fueled human progress. Human mobility has sparked innovated and expanded our world, and has laid the groundwork for social, cultural, and economic globalization. But migration also produces and exacerbated injustices. This course examines the ways that transnational and other mobilities constituted and are constituted by the movements of individuals at multiple scales. Drawing on contemporary scholarship in Human Geography, as well as related disciplines such as Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Media Studies, Critical Race Studies and Gender Studies, we will contemplate migration on multiple scales from the global to the individual, by way of the national and especially the urban scale. Students will be expected to be active participants in their own learning, and the course content will include both in-class academic study and participatory pedagogies such as active case studies and field trips.

UNIVERSITY POLICY RELATING TO FIELD TRIPS  
Be aware that during the field trip there may be periods of pedestrian circulation in the city and crossing roads with busy traffic. Appropriate clothing and foot wear must be worn. Further details will be discussed prior to the field trip. Students must at all times remain complaint with all student responsibilities, regulations, and policies as outlined in the current Academic Calendar, as well as relevant regulations and policies as outlined in the SFU Policy Gazette. This includes, but is not limited to, expected student conduct and the maintenance of appropriate medical insurance coverage.

TUTORIALS  
Tutorials will begin in the second week of class.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

·         To gain an appreciation for world geography and the historical, present-day and future dimensions of migration, especially in the urban context.
·         To formulate sufficiently general understandings of human geography to proceed towards more specialized study in upper level undergraduate coursework.
·         To develop a basic transdisciplinary understanding of migration in the contexts of geography at various scales, from global, national, urban, local and individual.
·         To understand historical, present and future trends in global transnational migration, and explain how they relate to public policy debates and current events.
·         To apply course knowledge, theoretical approaches, and concepts to real- world case studies.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Certain individual admissions for field trips may be required once or maximum twice in the semester.

REQUIRED READING: