Dr Myfanwy James

This course is available on the MSc in Development Management, MSc in Development Management (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Development Studies, MSc in Economic Policy for International Development, MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security, MSc in Health and International Development, MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Inequalities and Social Science, MSc in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy and MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Priority is given to students on the MSc International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies and MSc in International Migration and Public Policy, then International Development (ID) and joint ID MSc programmes and then students external to ID.  At each stage course places will be allocated by random selection according to the priorities detailed above.

The course examines the politics of forced migration and humanitarian responses, the diversity of lived experiences among refugees, as well as contemporary debates about ‘durable solutions’ in the face of protracted crises. The course is structured around four, interlocking themes.

The first section critically examines the causes of displacement. The course challenges notions of mono-causality in favour of a more complex and dynamic understandings of why people move. We focus on two debates: first, the contested relationship between conflict and displacement, and second, the complex connections between environmental stress, climate change, and migration.

The second section examines responses to forced migration. It examines the power and politics of the UN agency with a specific mandate for refugee protection and relief, the UNHCR, as well as the intersection between human rights and refugee law, and the contested relationship between humanitarianism and politics in contexts of forced displacement. We explore how displaced populations have been framed as security threats, and the way that this shapes both international responses and refugee experiences.

The third section explores lived experiences of forced migration. It considers how experiences of flight, encampment, and exile can be mediated and shaped by factors such as gender, race, age, sexuality, ethnicity, and class. Drawing on ethnographic approaches, we consider processes of meaning-making and political mobilization during displacement, and the differing experiences of people living in refugee camps and urban settlements.

The final section examines contemporary policy attempts at ‘solving’ protracted crises, and the limitations of these approaches. We consider existing practices and experiences of local integration, voluntary repatriation/return, and resettlement, and ask what it might mean to rethink these ‘durable solutions.’

20 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the WT.

The course is accompanied by a film club which explores the representation and lived experiences of refugees.  

Students will have a reading week in Week 6.

Students will co-produce seminar presentation and write a formative essay of 1500 words by week 8 of WT. Normally students will produce their formative essay within two weeks of presenting on that topic in the seminar.

1. Lischer, S. K. (2005). Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee camps, civil war, and the dilemmas of humanitarian aid. Cornell University Press.

2. Zetter, R., & Morrissey, J. (2014). The environment-mobility nexus: Reconceptualizing the links between environmental stress, (Im) mobility, and power. The Oxford handbook of refugee and forced migration studies, 342-354.

3. Moulin, C., & Nyers, P. (2007). “We live in a country of UNHCR”—Refugee protests and global political society. International Political Sociology, 1(4), 356-372.

4. Andersson, R. (2014) Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine migration and the business of bordering Europe. University of California Press.

5. Turner, L. (2015). Explaining the (non-) encampment of Syrian refugees: security, class and the labour market in Lebanon and Jordan. Mediterranean Politics, 20(3), 386-404.

6. Malkki, L. H. (1996). Speechless emissaries: Refugees, humanitarianism, and dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology, 11(3), 377-404.

7. Janmyr, M. (2022). Sudanese Refugees and the “Syrian Refugee Response” in Lebanon: Racialised Hierarchies, Processes of Invisibilisation, and Resistance. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 41(1), 131-156.

Take-home assessment (100%) in the ST.

The exam paper will be released in week 11 of the WT. The course is assessed through the submission of two 2100-word essays by Tuesday of week 1 of the ST.

Exam papers will comprise a section with questions drawn from specific weeks and another section with questions that engage themes from multiple weeks. Students are expected to address one question from both sections.