Overview

You will gain much in-demand expertise on border policies, identities and shifting global mobilities, issues that are dominating the agenda of many governments, return in the interventions of NGO’s, the transnational operations of businesses, and in the narratives of (social) media.

Furthermore:

• You will receive first-hand insights and guidance from experts in the field.
• You will be stimulated to develop your own views, research, and findings, to prepare you for your own future after your studies.

In our one-year master's programme the first semester has a strong knowledge and theory gaining orientation, whereby guest lectures, in-class interaction, assignments and excursions provide an opportunity to also apply theoretical lenses to empirical cases. 

The second semester is primarily devoted to your Master's thesis research. In many cases empirical fieldwork will form an important part of your research. For this we require you to have established a firm contact with one (or more) societal partners, to ensure your research has a local and/or more societal embedding. In some cases this may well resemble a more informal kind of internship. For those focusing more on secondary data or online data, the importance of societal partners in your research relates more to discussing the relevance of the research topic, and to share insights near the end of the thesis trajectory.

Future career opportunities 

This specialisation hands you the knowledge and skills for a career in jobs such as:

• Policy advisor in local, national or supranational government
• Research or advisory position with local, regional and international organisations tackling concerns such as the rights to mobility, the plight of refugees, the potential of cross-border regional development, or the transnational role of diasporas.
• Researching and/or teaching in the field of human geography, geopolitics, international relations, development studies, border studies, migration studies, European studies, conflict studies
• Research and advisory positions for NGO’s, critical journalism and advocacy platforms
• Part of our mission is also to nurture engaged citizens who drive social change through activism and critical thinking. 

Research

To give an impression of the type of research in this specialisation, here are a few research questions that we are studying:

• How to understand and normatively evaluate the EU’s border and migration regime?
• How can we move beyond the narrow, yet impactful, state-centric iconography of borders as lines and migration as invasion arrows in our maps, in order to come to terms with a more sophisticated understanding of today’s bordering processes and migration?
• What is the colonial legacy of today’s border, migration and integration policies?
• How do migration and career perspectives intertwine in uneven mobility policy landscapes?
• What is the significance and impact of migration between destinations in less affluent countries?
• What is the impact of migration, through transnational linkages, on economic processes elsewhere in the world?

Accreditation

This programme is accredited by the NVAO (the Dutch-Flemish accreditation organisation).