Course Director Viktoriya Sereda (Ukrainian Catholic University, The Forum transregionale Studien)
This course aims at the examination of various social impacts of migration and displacement processes in the contemporary world with a special focus on multi-level challenges brought by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The changing trends of Ukrainian emigration are explored through research-oriented individual and collective student projects that work with existing data collections and fieldwork materials. Special attention is paid to war-driven displacement as a factor of societal transformations from a comparative perspective. The course also explores the interrelation between the process of migration and the re-articulation of the sense of belonging by both resettled groups and receiving communities. The course participants engage in the collaborative discovery of several key problems such as Ukraine’s place in the care chain, gender aspects of migration, global diasporas, migrants as important transnational development agents, and the artistic representations of migration. In addition, it introduces students to a wide range of case studies, and it will teach them how to translate theoretical knowledge into the practical field.