This is a course all about the mobility of tourists, business people, refugees, passengers, commuters, students, backpackers, migrants, stowaways, pirates, terrorists—and many more. Challenging the way in which social science has been relatively ‘a-mobile’ until recently, through this course we will be getting to grips with how and why things move. What are the meanings attached to these movements? How fast do things move? What routes do these movements take? How and when do things stop? All of these questions generate new ways of thinking about the emergence, distribution, and patterning of power in our contemporary globalising world.

By the end of the module students should be able to:

1. Understand the most recent developments in social scientific thinking with regard to a conceptual understanding of mobility.
2. Develop these ideas into arguments with reference to historical and contemporary examples of mobile processes.
3. Demonstrate the different ways in which mobilities are defined within contemporary debates, and analyse their cultural, social and political implications.
4. Select and interrogate relevant literature concerning the cultural, social and political aspects of contemporary mobility issues.
5. Communicate their findings in written and oral form with reference to broader debates within Sociology and related disciplines.

800 word tutorial paper: 20% 

1200 word tutorial paper: 30%

2000 word research essay: 40%

Tutorial Participation: 10%

2 x 1 hour lectures

1 x 1 hour tutorial per week for 11 weeks

Any two first-year Sociology courses or with the permission of the lecturer.

SOCY1002 and SOCY1004