Exiles, Migrants and Citizens: Narrating and documenting displacement in contemporary Spain

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Discuss the contributions of migrants and exiles to their home and host countries
• Identify and compare the experiences of economic migrants, political refugees, and exiles
• Analyse critically the role of government policies and social networks in fostering, supporting and deterring migration
• Engage with the consequences of migration and exile upon individual and collective forms of identification
• Discuss the wider contexts and connections between Spanish recent emigration patterns and current immigration flows

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The impact of Spanish migration and exile on places of origin and destination
• The social and political contexts of migrations in 20th and 21st c. Spain
• Historical constructions of Spanish migrants and exiles
• Macro- and micro-structural aspects of Spanish migration and exile
• The impact of migratory and exilic experiences at individual and collective level

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Undertake critical reading of secondary sources
• Plan and organise your learning autonomously
• Make use of libraries and online resources to access relevant information
• Communicate your ideas clearly both orally and in writing
• Use tools from a variety of disciplines to analyse primary sources

Migration has been a recurrent theme that has characterized Spain’s social, political and cultural history since its emergence as a modern nation. This module will focus on the study of migration movements in the 20th and 21st century. Case studies could include:

a) Spanish Republican exile of the Spanish Civil War

b) Evacuation and exile of Spanish refugee children

c) Spanish emigration during the Franco regime

d) The migration reversal: Spain as a country of immigration since the mid 1980s

In analysing these migration episodes and movements the course will focus on key contextual issues, theoretical concepts and research methodologies used in the study of forced and voluntary migrations. The aim is to provide you with an overview of the political and socio-economic contexts that triggered these migrations and the dynamics that sustained them, as well as an understanding of the impact that the presence of exiles and migrants had on the receiving societies. More specifically, the course encourages you to reflect upon the impact that migration and exile have on individual and collective forms of identity, something that you will explore through analysis of a variety of primary sources, including personal testimonies, interviews, documentaries, migrant periodical publications and media representations of migrants and exiles. In doing so, a key concern will be to consider the ways in which individuals and societies experience, remember and interpret their memories of dislocation and displacement.

Teaching methods include

• Weekly double period seminar in which students present analysis of primary texts guided by sedondary theoretical and contextual readings
• Tutor-led informal lectures
• Individual tutorials

Learning activities include

• Student-led seminars and class discussion
• Group presentations
• Individual research
• Accessing online resources

Innovative or special features of this module

• Visiting speakers when appropriate

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.