This module examines the mutually constitutive relationship between migration and urban transformation in the Global South. It is based on the premise that migration is not merely a demographic process but a structuring force of urban life. In this context, cities—rather than nation-states alone—become central arenas in which mobility is governed, regulated, contested, and lived.
The course engages with key debates on the “local turn” in migration governance, multi-level urban regulation, Southern urban theory, and critiques of methodological nationalism. It situates migration within broader processes of development, neoliberal restructuring, informality, urban labour markets, and urban inequalities, including their articulation through governance regimes and spatial differentiation. Across the syllabus, these processes are empirically explored through themes of informality, labour, urban citizenship, inequality, violence, displacement, and urban development trajectories. Attention is given to how migration shapes labour markets, informal economies, gender relations, racial formations, urban violence, and citizenship regimes across cities of the Global South. These dynamics are examined not only as social processes but as embedded in everyday urban governance, inequality, and transformation.
Through contemporary scholarship grounded in the Global South, students will analyse how migrants reshape neighbourhoods, labour markets, and urban economies while navigating precarity, exclusion, and belonging. The course equips students with theoretical, comparative, and empirically grounded tools to critically assess migration as a central force in urban transformation.
