GLBL 016. Migration in a Globalized World

Migration is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Today, there are over 1 billion migrants globally, representing about 1 in 8 people. This includes over 763 million internal migrants, 281 international migrants, and 120 million forcibly displaced individuals (WHO, 2022). In this course, we will consider the causes and consequences of these migration flows from the perspective of both sending as well as receiving societies. In doing so, we will strive to understand how migration both shapes and is shaped by a complex interplay of institutional environments, structural factors, and political processes. Specifically, we will examine how migrants have been conceptualized in existing academic and policy discourse, when and why people move across or within countries, and how states and societies respond to such movements. In doing so, we will draw from a wide array of source materials, including scholarship in economics, sociology, political science and anthropology, as well as long-form journalism and film. We will cover the full richness of migration across world, engaging with case studies from the United States, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia. Our examination of migration will span various scales, from the macro-level of nation-states to the micro-scale of municipalities, households, and the individual. The primary goal of this course is for students to understand the multicausal nature of migration, and to appreciate the connections between migration and contemporary debates on national identity, social cohesion, economic development, and political stability.
1 credit.
Fall 2025. Staff.
Catalog chapter: Global Studies
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/global-studies

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