Class, migration and citizenship

The course will address the issues of class and citizenship as they relate specifically to migration in post-2004 Europe. Migration therefore is the intellectual vehicle for focusing in on the life chances of citizens in both Poland and the UK. The course will analyse the current state of migration studies and its main features – interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, lack of one dominant theory of migration and the methodological challenges of overcoming disciplinary boundaries and methodological nationalisms. Other issues will examine how class and citizenship theory has sought to deal with the issues of migration and changes to the theory of diasporic citizenship.We will see how migrants themselves prioritise the component parts of their host and home country citizenships. How have Polish and other ECE migrants affected the citizenship agenda in the UK. The course will examine the chances that migrants themselves and their children have to progress up the social ladder and what does their success or otherwise tell us about the class and stratification order in the UK. At the same time the emerging class structure of the sending society in this case Polish society will be examined to see how this relates to migration patterns. Finally we will reflect on the position of so called ‘irregular migrants’ within host societies and the tendency to underclass formation.

Assessment: one 5000 word assessed essay