Refugees and the Nation State

Global Migration II: Forced Migration and Migration-Development Nexus

In this course, Dr Tahir Zaman (University of Sussex) explores forced migration and the relationship between migration and socio-economic development. In the first module, we think about the concept of the refugee, and the relationships between the nation state, displacement and asylum. The second module then considers the usefulness of the conventional distinction between voluntary and forced migration, and the third outlines the UN’s three durable solutions for refugees - the outcomes under which an individual is no longer regarded as requiring international protection. We then move on to migration and development in the fourth and fifth modules, examining firstly how this relationship should be understood, and secondly the role of remittances as a driver of development. We conclude with a module on the costs of migration both for individual migrants and countries of origin.

Refugees and the Nation State

In this module, we think about the relationship between refugees and the modern nation state. We focus on: (i) typical media depictions of “the refugee”, and how the term is used in different contexts, for example academia; (ii) how migration under the nation state system, based on controlled access through fixed borders, excludes refugees, who often have needed to flee spontaneously; (iii) how ideas of “the nation” themselves can produce displacement – many contemporary conflicts are caused by a majority national population defining a minority group as “other” and so unwelcome within the nation’s boundaries.