Study programmes

The Migration Studies and New Societies programme offers a unique education in the interdisciplinary field of migration studies. The programme is designed on the basis of social sciences (with a focus on sociology and social anthropology), political science (public policy), law and humanities. During their studies at the three European universities - the University of Milan, the University of Warsaw and Charles University - students benefit from the expertise of the participating educational institutions, spending at least one semester of their studies at each of them. The programme trains experts in migration studies in three learning pathways: Civil Society and Integration; International Migration and Policies; and Social Anthropology of Space and Mobility.

The learning pathway Civil Society and Integration aims to provide the skills and knowledge necessary for working with the migrant and migrant communities, especially in the context of business, public employment and non-profit organizations operating in the fields of reception, integration, and support to the migrant (education, public services, labour market etc.). This learning pathway aims to provide fully-fledged interdisciplinary skills, including legal, sociological, linguistic, and anthropological competencies, to prepare the graduate for the multiple challenges that the reception of the migrant poses. Thanks to the skills acquired during the studies, the student will be able to face both the phases of the first reception and support for the presentation of the application for protection and the phases that aim at integration, job placement, access to services (welfare) and the stay of the migrant. All above-described competencies can be used both in business, administration and non-governmental organizations as well as in an academic career.

The learning pathway International Migration and Policies includes a set of courses aiming at acquiring the cognitive and methodological tools for the study of the dynamics of the migration phenomena (flows, stocks, structural features of migration, migration trajectories and strategies, statistics), representation of the migrant (for example in the media or the literature), allowing for the understanding of the policies developed, especially in the European context, for the management of immigration. Students shall therefore acquire competencies as regards the understanding of international migration, its causes, its challenges and opportunities. The courses taught within this specialization aim: on the one hand, to train well-prepared professionals able to contribute to the development and implementation of public intervention policies in the field of migration, reception, and integration of immigrants. These competencies are required in European and international institutions, as well as in public administrations at ministerial, regional, and local levels; on the other, to train methodological and communication skills to study and represent the migration phenomenon in an informed, correct, aware and effective way. Additionally, the specialization is constructed in a way allowing for exercising research activities and continuing education at the graduate level.

Specialization Social Anthropology of Space and Mobility Studies ways in which people, places, and things become part of multiple networks and linkages, variously located in time and space. Its perspective comes from the critical debate of a ‘mobility turn’ in social theory to indicate a perceived transformation of the social sciences in response to the increasing importance of various forms of movement. The specialisation Social Anthropology of Space and Mobility studies ways of theorising how people, objects, and ideas travel by looking at social phenomena through the lens of movement. This can be seen as urbanisation and urban-rural exchange, a debate of both theories of sedentarism and deterritorialisation trends in social science research that may confine both researchers and their object(s) of study. Mobility captures the common impression that our life-world is in constant flux, with not only people but also cultures, objects, capital, businesses, services, diseases, media, images, information, and ideas. Previously social scientists tended to ignore or regard border-crossing movements as deviations from normative place-bound communities, cultural homogeneity, and social integration. Nowadays, discourses of globalisation and cosmopolitanism seem to have shifted the pendulum in the opposite direction, with mobility often being promoted as normality and place attachment as a digression or resistance against globalising forces. At the same time, not all mobilities are valued equally positively, and the very processes that produce trans-border movements also result in geographical immobility and social exclusion.