Interdisciplinary Elective Subject, topic 4: Migrant Lives: Experience, Psyche, History

The purpose of this course is to give students a deeper understanding of migrant lives, experiences and emotions in the 20^th and 21^st century, to give a fuller sense of the varied comparative and transdisciplinary methodologies that can be used in the study of the subject, and to introduce students to research work with a view to thesis writing. The course incorporates varied approaches including chronological, thematic, and theoretical aspects. For example: the relationship between psy disciplines and migration experiences; the emergence of refugee psychiatry and its relationship to broader political contexts; and the politics of humanitarian psychiatry. The course will center around a group of comparative and interdisciplinary case studies. These include displaced persons and forced migration from within and outside Europe after the First and Second World War; dissidents and refugees in Europe; guest workers and post-colonial labour migrants after 1945 in Britain, France and Germany. The course also incorporates varied methodologies and sources, including printed and unprinted sources, oral history and life-story analysis, quantitative, qualitative and comparative methods as well as film, memoir, and visual analysis.

Goal description:

The purpose of this course is to instil in students a deeper understanding of migrant lives in the 20th century, to give a fuller sense of the varied comparative and transdisciplinary methodologies that can be used in the study of the subject, and to introduce students to research work with a view to thesis writing.

To this end the course will incorporate a variety of approaches including chronological, thematic, and theoretical aspects into the study of particular topics:

• The relationship between psy disciplines and migration experiences: how has the relationship between pathology and migration been constructed in different moments in the 20^th century?
• Emergence of refugee psychiatry and its relationship to broader political contexts, and the politics of humanitarian psychiatry

The chronological focus for the course will be on the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Case Studies: The course will center around a group of comparative and interdisciplinary case studies. These include: displaced persons and forced migration from within and outside Europe after the First and Second World War; dissidents and refugees in Europe; guest workers and post-colonial labour migrants after 1945 in Britain, France and Germany. 

Methodologies (incorporated into the various chronological, thematic and theoretical subjects): printed and unprinted sources, oral history and life-story analysis, quantitative and qualitative methods as well as film, memoir and visual analysis