The course Studying Migrations in English (SME) has a twofold aim: to advance interdisciplinary and comparative understanding of the various manifestations of migration, and to improve students’ English migration-related vocabulary, as well as their English oral and writing skills. The course provides a dynamic introduction to human mobility across the world, focusing on international, regional and domestic frameworks, the content of selected laws and policies, as well as individuals’ life narratives and groups’ practices.

SME invites students into migrants’ multifaceted journey, drawing mainly on policies and laws applicable to different processes of human mobility and integration settings. It expands on themes addressed in academic literature (Law, Legal Anthropology and Political Sciences...), and relies on policy papers, legal resources, reports published by international and non-governmental organizations, newspapers, as well as published empirical inquiries.

Students will address long-lasting and new legal challenges such as categorizing - and protecting accordingly - the types of mobility, the implementation of International Law and human rights standards, the normative implications of selected domestic integration policies, the nexuses between migration and religion, race/ ethnicity or security, the limits of the principle of nationality as a criterion of membership, and the transnational condition of immigrants.

 The first term introduces conceptual frameworks and their related English terminology, focusing on the legal settings, the definitional challenges of the various forms of human movement, as well as the transnational approach to immigrant populations.

During the second term, students go a step further studying selected contemporary programmes, techniques, laws and policies implemented for the management of migratory flows or immigrants. It introduces students to a human rights approach to migrations and the related English terminology, focusing on the practices of IOs, NGOs and judges.