This course provides a broad understanding of human mobility, culture and patterns of migration in our contemporary social world. The movement of people, culture, capital, commodities, information and ideas has become a central theme in contemporary life. The course invites students to understand human mobility in a global context from different disciplinary perspectives and diverse theoretical backgrounds. It introduces to students different forms of contemporary human mobility and a wide range of topics and issues that are related to human mobility in contemporary world. They range from issues and debates surrounding contemporary migration, migrant cultures and communities, tourism in a globalized world, how human mobility is patterned by education, job opportunities and intimate relationship to how mobile technologies inspire new forms of mobile life or relationship. Upon completion, students will be able to possess the essential theoretical and empirical knowledge to understand how human mobility works to organize our social world and private life, and how our mobility or immobility is defined and confined by numerous private and public factors.

Mobility and Migration in Contemporary Society