M.Sc. Global Refugee Studies

Global Refugee Studies, a specialization under Development and International Relations at Aalborg University, Copenhagen, is a two-year fulltime international MSc-study program which focuses on refugees and forced migration.

Today Western development aid is increasingly directed at initiatives related to refugees. The idea is that development aid should be directed to the countries and regions that generate migrants and refugees in order to create new circumstances to ensure that refugees and forced migrants remain in the close neighbourhood either in the countries of origin or the surrounding countries. There is a serious lack of knowledge about the impact of this and many other initiatives on the actual situation of global, regional and local refugees. This MSc-study program will add to bridge the gap of the missing knowledge about the status of forced migration.

The Danish and European debate regarding refugees has changed radically in the past few years. From an almost exclusive focus on assimilation and integration it has now turned into both a security and foreign policy issue and is regarded as a development problem.

Topics to be studied at Global Refugee Studies
* Human rights
* Transnational communities/identities
* Displacement: Causes and effects
* Globalization, ethnicity and processes of social transformation
* Forced migration and internal population displacement
* Problems with rehabilitation
* Mal-development and climate change as a cause and consequence of displacement.
* The roots of poverty and inequalities
* The role of international government organizations and non-governmental organizations at both the international and local levels and their work with refugees
* Criminality and trafficking
* Gender, women and children
* Culture and identity


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