Bachelor 2025/2026

Global and Regional Migration Governance

Type: Elective course (International Relations)

Delivered by: School of International Affairs

When: 4 year, 1, 2 module

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Oleg Korneev

Language: English

Contact hours: 36

Course Syllabus

Abstract

International migration is one of the most important issues in world politics and is studied across all disciplines in social sciences. This course provides an analysis of theory and practice of regional and global migration governance. It examines how states, regional organisations (such as the European Union, ECOWAS or the Eurasian Economic Union), institutions at global level (such as the United Nations, the International Organisation for Migration or the World Bank) and other non-state actors respond to the challenges of international migration. The course encourages students to assess leading conceptual and theoretical interpretations of the relationship between international migration, the state system and ideas such as sovereignty, rights and protection. These issues, as well as their reflection in border, migration and citizenship regimes, are at the intersection of politics at state/sub-state and regional/global level. The course considers responses to international migration in its various forms in terms of often competing approaches to understanding or “framing” of international migration (as a security concern, as a human rights issue or as a matter of economic development). It also explores the current state of and prospects for global migration governance. The course relies on rich interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical literature on migration governance focusing, among other, on issues of policy change, convergence and divergence. It begins with a general introduction to our understandings of international migration and reviews major theoretical debates on migration politics and policy-making. It then examines practices of migration governance in various regions of the world. It also explores paradigms, frames, structures, actors and practices of global migration governance and their localisation in specific regional/national settings. The course concludes by linking issues of global migration governance with global governance in other issue areas.