This course examines refugees, migrants, stateless people, and internally displaced persons in contemporary crisis settings. It explores how conflict, political violence, disasters, climate stress, economic precarity, rights violations, and restrictive migration policies shape human mobility, protection risks, and policy responses.
Students study how international protection categories, including refugee status, internal displacement, statelessness, mixed migration, and irregular status, are defined in law, translated into policy, and applied in practice. The course introduces the principal frameworks governing migration and displacement, including the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, regional instruments, international human rights law, and humanitarian principles. It examines how governments, international organizations, humanitarian agencies, and local institutions interpret and implement these frameworks, with particular attention to gaps between legal obligations, policy commitments, and lived realities.
The course analyzes displacement at the level of states and institutions, as well as at the level of individuals, families, and communities. Topics include borders, asylum systems, encampment, urban displacement, temporary protection, humanitarian assistance, return, local integration, and resettlement. Students also examine how identity, legal status, documentation, family separation, health, livelihoods, exposure to violence, and social networks influence vulnerability, agency, and access to protection.
Case studies from conflict affected settings, mixed migration routes, refugee hosting communities, and climate and disaster related displacement connect legal and policy frameworks to operational decisions. Course materials include legal texts, policy documents, humanitarian assessments, field research, and insights from practitioners and affected communities. Students consider how data and evidence inform protection decisions, resource allocation, and policy implementation, while remaining attentive to their limitations and potential risks. Students will also examine the relations between displaced populations and host communities, including access to services and resources, social cohesion, trust, participation, and local governance during prolonged crises.
Technology and data are integrated throughout the course as instruments of both protection and power. Topics include biometric registration, digital identity, data governance, surveillance, misinformation, artificial intelligence, remote programming, and cash assistance. Students assess how these tools can improve access and responsiveness while also creating exclusion, dependency, privacy concerns, and unintended harm.
By the end of the course, students will be prepared to interpret protection frameworks, analyze policy choices, identify implementation gaps, and formulate practical, ethical, and accountable responses to migration and displacement.