Crossing Boundaries: Migration Processes, Democratic Governance, and the Challenges of Climate Change (Teil 1) - Detailseite

Please read: This is a two-semester course in the MA-level. The students will design and conduct their research projects during this seminar by using qualitative or computational methods, such as fieldwork, interviewing, but also critical discourse analysis, (social and traditional media analysis). The course encourages students to create self-designed research projects in the form of case studies by practically applying the theoretical frameworks of sociologists Asef Bayat’s “social non-movements” and Michele Lamont’s “social boundaries.” Students will explore the concept of “crossing boundaries” by conducting inductive research on 1) how everyday resistance contributes as responses to global challenges such as migration, democratic governance and climate change, and 2) how the subtle and mundane resistances to global challenges differ across various contexts.

The focus of the seminar is how citizens and non-citizens cross political, economic and social boundaries through everyday forms of resistance and activism. The key areas in this seminar are: Crossing Boundaries in Migration Processes: How does climate change politically and socially destabilize already vulnerable regions of the world? How do citizens and non-citizens cross boundaries of social, political and economic struggles through self-defined subtle, often mundane, and non-confrontational resistances? Crossing Boundaries in Democratic Governance & Acts of Citizenship: What kind of challenges do democratic institutions face through migration dynamics and climate change? How are democratic institutions facilitate / hinder citizens and non-citizens’ representation / participation while countries are transforming through migration processes and climate change? How do citizens and non-citizens cross the boundaries of democratic institutions and create everyday forms of resistance when democratic institutions fail them? Crossing the boundaries of climate change impacts: What do people do in order to resist and overcome the challenges of the climate change? How do people build resilience against climate change through community support, everyday changes in buying or not-buying certain goods, being creative in new ways of life styles, sharing ideas on sustainable lifestyles among others (also on social media)?

By applying Bayat's concepts to Lamont's theory, the course aims to analyze how individuals, particularly those affected by migration, democratic governance challenges, and climate change, engage in everyday acts of resistance within diverse contexts. In this course, we aim for a nuanced understanding of how people creatively navigate and challenge social structures and expectations in the face of complex, interconnected global issues.

• Bayat, Asaf. 2013. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, Stanford University Press, 2013, 2^nd edition (also in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, German, and Swedish editions). 
• Lamont, Michele et al . 2016. Getting respect. Responding to stigma and discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel
• by Michèle Lamont, Graziella Moraes Silva, Jessica Welburn, Joshua Guetzkow, Nissim Mizrachi, Hanna Herzog, and Elisa Reis, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press,  
• Emejulu,  Akwugo  & Inez van der Scheer (2022) Refusing politics as usual: mapping women of colour’s radical praxis in London and Amsterdam, Identities,29:1, 9-26, DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2021.1914951

This is a joint activity with Dr. Claudia Matthes, Academic Chair of Democracy Hub and Prof. Dr. Gökce Yurdakul, Academic Chair of Climate Hub at the Circle-U, https://www.circle-u.eu