MA Migration History: People, Objects, Cultures

The MA in Migration History: People, Objects, Cultures offers a unique opportunity to undertake advanced study of one of the oldest, most constant, and still searingly relevant phenomena in human history: the movement of people, both voluntarily and involuntarily, across borders.

Key features

• Unique postgraduate degree: focusing on the history of international migration over several centuries, from the early modern era to the present.
• Diverse in approach: emphasises political, economic, cultural, intellectual, and imperial explanations for and interpretations of migration history.
• Visits to and workshops in key archives and cultural institutions in the UK and abroad.
• Taught in Bloomsbury, in central London.
• Study week in Paris during the Spring term.

Structure of the course

The MA in Migration History is a taught Master’s, based in Bloomsbury in central London, which runs for one year, from September to September. In the autumn, winter, and spring terms, students take a range of modules, each of which is dedicated either to the history of migration in a particular geographical region, including a comprehensive grounding in the history of emigration and immigration in the British Isles, or to specific themes in migration history, from the role of war and repression in generating mass exoduses of refugees to the transoceanic movements forced and facilitated by the rise of global empires. These modules will meet weekly at Buckingham’s London campus at 51 Gower Street, and will consist of a mixture of lectures, seminar discussions, and class visits to relevant archives, libraries, and museums.

In the spring and summer terms, students undertake a significant and independent research project in the form of a dissertation. Students may write their dissertation on any subject to do with migration history, so long as there is sufficient evidence to illuminate it. Students’ supervisors, as well as the knowledge, skills, and experience of working with relevant primary and secondary sources acquired during the taught modules, will help students to select and hone a dissertation topic of their choice.

Modules on the Course

Autumn term

Emigration and Immigration in the Modern British Isles

This module gives students a systematic understanding of the history of emigration and immigration in the British Isles since the eighteenth century. Each week focuses on a crucial ‘moment’ in migration history, from early modern British emigration into and colonization of North America and Ireland to the impact of the Windrush generation in creating a multicultural United Kingdom in the second half of the twentieth century. The study of several of these themes will be facilitated by workshops highlighting relevant primary sources at institutions like the National Archives and the Migration Museum. Throughout, students will consider how this history is presented to the public and its role in current political discourse. The module therefore serves as a thematic introduction to the MA in Migration History while providing a comprehensive grounding of the migration history of this country.

The Practice of Research

This module provides students with a thorough understanding of the methodologies, skills and critical thinking required for the study, research, and writing of History at the MA degree level. These will include practice in critically reading primary and secondary sources, a dissection of existing historiography and its relationship to theory, and considerations on the ethics of historical practice, including personal interviews and oral sources. Using examples and sources of migration history drawn from across the globe, the module culminates with tutorials on planning a dissertation.

Winter term

Persecution and Protection: The History of Asylum

Refugees, exiles, and the divisive international and domestic politics of asylum have emerged as some of the great global issues of the last generation. But they are hardly new. This module gives students a history of refugees from the exiles of Europe’s early modern religious wars to the global displacement of people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The causes of displacement, from international and civil war to political, religious, and economic marginalization are explored. So too is the evolution of the concept of ‘asylum’ from religious notions of ‘sanctuary’ to the international refugee protection regime constructed after the Second World War.

Empires of Movement: Exchange, Enslavement and Emigration (optional)

Empires have always been a crucial factor in the global movement migration. This module will convey how the actions, objectives, and cultures of empire have shaped the migration of peoples and materials, the transmission of cultural ideas and practices, and the ecological consequences of imperialism not least through the movement of flora and fauna. By nature global in its approach, the module’s topics range from the forcible transportation of enslaved peoples and indentured servants to the impact of decolonization on migration patterns after 1945.

Art Across Borders: Networks, Collecting, and Conquest (optional)

This module, taught in partnership with Buckingham’s MA in the Art Market, Provenance and the History of Collecting focuses on the changing status of objects and artefact when they move between different cultural, religious and political contexts. Organised thematically, the module seeks to develop awareness of the current theoretical and methodological approaches to the history of collecting, patronage, the art market, and museums, as well as to provide the critical tools to assess these approaches and debates. It is also intended to equip students to take full account of collection ethics associated with the trans-national movement of cultural objects and with societal displacement.

Spring term

Migration in La Grande Nation

A counterpart to ‘Emigration and Immigration in the Modern British Isles’, this module provides a history of movement to and within France. It begins with five weeks of classes on the migration history of France, covering the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. Students then travel to Paris for a week-long study trip. There, the class will meet with historians and fellow students across the Université de Paris and with curators at institutions such as the Carnavalet Museum and the National Museum of the History of Immigration. Students will use source material encountered on this trip in their written work, and are invited to draw comparisons between the histories and current immigration debates of Britain and France.

Dissertation

In the spring term, students begin preparation for their dissertations. With the aid of their lecturers, students will select a dissertation subject and be assigned a supervisor. Through the term, in discussion with their peers, students will hone their subject and begin to build up a base of evidence to examine. By the end of the term, students will have produced a research exercise, often consisting of a single chapter, introduction or literature, or other portion of the dissertation deemed appropriate by their supervisor.

Summer term

Dissertation

This will constitute the culmination of students’ work on the MA in Migration History. Building on the work done in the spring term, students will turn their full attention in the summer to researching, drafting and completing their dissertations, with support from their supervisors. In doing so they will acquire unmatched expertise in an area of migration history.

Course director

Dr Thomas C Jones

Dr Jones is one of the UK’s leading historians of refugees and asylum. He has authored numerous articles on the subject and his forthcoming book on the history of asylum in Britain, Liberty’s Refuge, will be published by Harvard University Press. He is a founding member of AsilEuropeXIX, an international network dedicated to the comparative study of the history of refugees. He convenes Buckingham’s PhD in Refugee History and also teaches migration history at the undergraduate level.

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