Reflections on the challenges of teaching migration in a changing world

The study of migration has transformed and expanded massively, especially over the last 30 years, as issues of migration have moved from the relative margins to the core of politics and global societal change. This is not to say that migration and ethnic relations are more important today than before, but issues about movement, mobility, and the increasing cultural, ethnic and religious diversity this brings, are seen as important challenges to states, legal systems, international relations, and how people live with one another. Migration as a topic has become an important interpretive lens through which societies and people understand the core changes that we experience as a consequence of the increasing globalization processes that shape the contemporary world. This can be ‘for good’, for example, in public mobilizations to support refugees and people displaced from their homes by international conflicts, or ‘for bad’ in the reactionary populist politics that attempts to justify anti-immigration policies by stigmatizing groups on religious, ethnic or racial grounds, such as ‘Muslim bans’ and ‘Building walls’. Here is not the place to unpack these complex developments nor explain the role of migration as a driver and outcome of globalization processes. None the less, it is important to flag up the moving target that our research is trying to understand, because this informs our approaches to teaching migration, and shapes the range of perspectives and topics that we select and group together under the label ‘migration studies’ at a particular historical moment. It is important to ask where migration should rightly sit within teaching programmes today. How can we adapt to keep pace with advancing understanding of the world developments that drive, and are driven by, migration, on one side, and the institutional changes within the university sector that delivers teaching and learning, on the other?to understand, because this informs our approaches to teaching migration, and shapes the range of perspectives and topics that we select and group together under the label ‘migration studies’ at a particular historical moment. It is important to ask where migration should rightly sit within teaching programmes today. How can we adapt to keep pace with advancing understanding of the world developments that drive, and are driven by, migration, on one side, and the institutional changes within the university sector that delivers teaching and learning, on the other?