TRANSMIC Training Session (UMinho)
April 20th, 2015 by Niels
Date/Time
Date(s) - 20/04/2015 - 24/04/2015
All Day
Location
University of Minho, Law School
Categories No Categories
The TRANSMIC training session to be held at the Law School of the University of Minho, in Braga, Portugal, adds to the theoretical framework provided in the previous sessions by bringing to the fore socio-cultural, legal, political and economic perspectives on transnational migration. From a socio-cultural perspective, it is worth noting how the speedy flow of goods, money, services and ideas through transnational migrant networks impacts on social, political, economic and cultural phenomena in migrant sending countries as well as in the neighbourhoods and cities that migrants live in, while reviewing the different conceptualizations of transnationalism and its critique. From a legal perspective, it is important to understand the Private International Law aspects of transnational migration, in particular migration within and into the European Union, by considering issues such as the selection of the applicable law via conflict rules, the recognition of foreign judgments and documents, the application of foreign law and the public policy exception, etc. From a political perspective, it is worth discussing the concept of “political transnationalism” as a concept that allows exploring, on the one hand, immigrants’ cross-border formal and informal political practices and, on the other hand, sending countries policies towards citizens abroad. From an economic perspective, the fact that a significant part of migrant flows worldwide are (explicitly or implicitly) economically motivated requires an economic assessment of transnational migration as a process linking countries of origin and destination. This implies employing economic methods and addressing such questions as what may be the drivers of non-settlement forms of migration, whether wage differences are a necessary and sufficient condition for migration to occur, why migrants remit, etc.
Building on the previous TRANSMIC session, the training session will also cover methodological issues – the ethics concerns involved in transnational migration research, the pitfalls of studying foreign legal systems, and the use of quantitative data analysis –, and will allow students to improve their presentation skills, by learning how to make the most of a single speech and by applying these skills when pitching their individual research projects.
