The Age of Global Mobilities: Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migration
UndergraduateMUR-SOC3002025
Course information for 2025 intake View information for 2024 course intake
Explore human migration across the world. Think about humanitarian crises, refugees and asylum seekers. Get critical about media coverage. You’ll work on evidence-based arguments considering human rights and security concerns.
- Study method
- 100% online
- Assessments
- 100% online
- Enrol by
- 20 July 2025
- Entry requirements
- Prior study needed
- Duration
- 13 weeks
- Price from
- $2,125
- Upfront cost
- $0
- Loan available
- HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP available
The Age of Global Mobilities: Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migration
About this subject
At the completion of this subject students will be able to:
- Critically engage with major sociological and development concepts related to human migration, including permanent and temporary migration, displacement, resettlement, borders, citizenship, and human rights.
- Understand the impact of influential debates concerning temporary and permanent migration, refugees, asylum seekers, and human rights.
- Know where to source quality news coverage and opinion pieces on refugees, migration, and border politics, and critically appraise information circulating on social and popular news media on these topics.
- Synthesise evidence, interpretations and policy debates to make an evidence-based argument in written, verbal and/or other forms, applying the ethical and other conventions of the discipline.
- To be confirmed.
This unit explores the socio-cultural and political contexts, dimensions, and outcomes of migration and the cross-cultural flows they produce. We examine the forces that drive increased mobility—including humanitarian emergency situations and extreme weather events that destroy livelihoods and strain local food systems, labour supply chains, and economic and social aspirations. The unit considers processes of categorising and labelling people on the move: forced migrant, refugee, asylum seeker, irregular migrant, and boat people challenging us to develop intellectual positions on contemporary issues of justice, rights and the securitisation of migration in their local and global dimensions. We consider the implications, challenges, and opportunities of human migration, ranging from the personal to the geopolitical, and attendant cultural and religious diversity, economic and social remittances, and impacts on families and entire communities.
Please Note: All students studying at Murdoch University will need to complete the compulsory unit, Murdoch Academic Passport (MAP100), which only takes 2-3 hours to complete online. Find out more: http://goto.murdoch.edu.au/MurdochAcademicPassport.
- Critical review of news media (30%)
- Photo Essay (30%)
- Global Mobilities Research Report (30%)
- Engagement/participation (10%)
For textbook details check your university's handbook, website or learning management system (LMS).
This research-based university in Perth has a strong interdisciplinary focus and a reputation for outstanding teaching and ground-breaking research. With more than 25,000 students and 2,400 staff from over 90 countries, and campuses in Dubai and Singapore, Murdoch embraces free thinking, shared ideas and knowledge to make a difference, and Open Universities Australia is certainly part of that.
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- QS Ranking 2024:
- 27
- Times Higher Education Ranking 2024:
- 26
Entry requirements
Others
To enrol in this subject, you must have passed a minimum of 12 credit points at 100-level.
Additional requirements
No additional requirements
Study load
- 0.125 EFTSL
- This is in the range of 10 to 12 hours of study each week.
Equivalent full time study load (EFTSL) is one way to calculate your study load. One (1.0) EFTSL is equivalent to a full-time study load for one year.
Find out more information on Commonwealth Loans to understand what this means to your eligibility for financial support.
What to study next?
Once you’ve completed this subject it can be credited towards one of the following courses
Bachelor of Global Security (Terrorism and Counterterrorism Studies)
UndergraduateMUR-BGS-DEG
Bachelor of Arts (Sustainable Development)
UndergraduateMUR-ASD-DEG
Bachelor of Arts (International Aid and Development)
UndergraduateMUR-AID-DEG
Bachelor of Arts (Community Development)
UndergraduateMUR-CDV-DEG
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