Refugee & Forced Migration Studies Minor

In the past two centuries, since the dawn of the modern nation-state, forcible displacement of people has become a norm around the globe. In the past few years more than 60 million people have been displaced by war, famine, economics, political persecution, and ecological disasters. These migrations have inundated the media with heartbreaking images of people desperately trying to cross oceans, impassable lands, and hostile territories in search of refuge and a better home.

This unprecedented crisis has generated a variety of social, political, economic, and cultural challenges and conflicts and has strained the liberal world order created after the Second World War—an order based on respect for human rights, recognition of the inherent dignity of all individuals, and adherence to democratic norms of governance.

Students minoring in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at Bellarmine University will take an array of interdisciplinary courses, the overarching goals of which will be:

• to introduce students to histories of migrations from ancient times to the very present;

• to endow students with an understanding of legal issues and concepts that have developed around displaced peoples;

• to enrich students with tools needed to think critically about the legal, social, economic, and cultural consequences of migration; and

• to ensure students are able to think through, and even come up with, different paradigms and solutions that have arisen in response to the crisis.

• A minor in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies will help prepare students in History, Pre Law, Political Science, Sociology and other majors to enter graduate programs and successfully compete for jobs in expanding fields related to refugees and forcibly displaced migrants, including refugee resettlement, immigration law, diaspora studies, and many other areas—in both governmental and non-governmental institutions.