78774 - Sociology of Migrations (LM)

Academic Year 2022/2023

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Language, Society and Communication (cod. 8874)

Learning outcomes

The student acquires a general introduction to the study of contemporary international migrations. It will focus on the main issues in the sociology of migration, ad on the most important interpretative models of the migratory processes. Students will be introduced not only to the classical sociological conceptualizations derived from economics and demography, but also to the most recent theoretical and explanatory patterns.

Course contents

ASIAN IM/MOBILITIES

Im/mobilities, Migration, and Society in Asia

The course deals with mobility, immobility, and migration involving Asian countries -with the main focus on East and Southeast Asia.

First, the course will delve into racializing ideologies emphasising how they are systematically entangled with politics of language and translation.

Second, the course will discuss how mobilities and migration affect differently the different social strata, with different modes of im/mobility available for the capital rich, the workers, the highly skilled and students.

Third, the course will shed light on how im/mobility and migration are in a dynamic tension with socio-cultural changes in terms of:

> the growing entanglement of care and control in Asian mobilities as manifested in the use of social robotics to address the widespread sentiments towards the arrival of aliens in the national territory;

> birth tourism as a way to escape limits imposed by citizenship;

> the heightened surveillance of marriage migration and sex migration as they are sources of public anxiety, perceived as they are as inseparable from sexual morality, national identity, and border security.

Besides, the course also offers an introduction to visual sociology as a tool that enables the students to elaborate sociological interpretations of the images and videos proposed by the instructor.

Guest lecturers may be invited.

Link to further information https://unibo.academia.edu/antonellaceccagno

 

Readings/Bibliography

Articles can be accessed via username and password on IOL- Educational material (https://iol.unibo.it).

Videos will be available on dropbox.

Teaching methods

Lectures and discussions in class, including watching and discussing films and videoclips. Students are strongly encouraged to present in class.

Assessment methods

Students attending classwork will:

1. make presentations to the class and stimulate the classroom discussion on one or more papers included in the readings list and other papers agreed with the instructor;

2. write a final paper (3000 words, including references) - agreed with the instructor - on one of the topics addressed in class. A topic not included in the readings list – and the relevant bibliography- can be agreed with the instructor. Student initiative in articulating themes, connecting different texts and visual materials, proposing videoclips or other visual products linked to the topic of the course will be positively evaluated.

The paper should be in MS Word (.docx). Only articles, books and documentary films discussed in the paper can be included in the references and viceversa. 

Students attending classwork will

  1. make presentations to the class and stimulate the classroom discussion on one or more papers included in the readings list and other papers agreed with the instructor;
  2. write a final paper (3000 words, including references) - agreed with the instructor - on one of the topics addressed in class. A topic not included in the readings list – and the relevant bibliography- can be agreed with the instructor. Student initiative in articulating themes, connecting different texts and visual materials, proposing videoclips or other visual products linked to the topic of the course will be positively evaluated.

The paper should be in MS Word (.docx). Only articles, books and documentary films discussed in the paper can be included in the references. References should be made in the text, for instance (Ceccagno 2022), not in the footnotes. Papers not meeting these criteria will be sent back and will have to be resubmitted.

Students not attending classwork will take an oral exam on the readings and the videos of the course. Questions will aim at testing the student ability to critically address the proposed issues and build an argument with an appropriate language.

For both students attending and not attending classes, the assessment will take into consideration:

  1. Proper knowledge of the subjects
  2. Ability to critically analyze and connect concepts, images, and themes
  3. Competences in the use of appropriate terminology

Students not attending classwork will take an oral exam on the readings and the videos of the course. Questions will aim at testing the student ability to critically address the proposed issues and build an argument with an appropriate language.

For both students attending and not attending classes, the assessment will take into consideration:

1. Proper knowledge of the subjects

2. Ability to critically analyze and connect concepts, images, and themes

3. Competences in the use of appropriate terminology.

Teaching tools

Readings are complemented with videos and images. Guest lecturers may be invited.

Office hours

See the website of Antonella Ceccagno

SDGs

Gender equality Decent work and economic growth Industry, innovation and infrastructure Reduced inequalities

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.