#30 & 31 BIG Podcast – Democracy, Migration Studies, and Border Studies: Bridges and/or Gaps

featuring Oliver Schmidtke, UVic European Studies Scholar, Professor, and Director of the Centre for Global Studies

Classically, Migration Studies explore all mobility regimes of human groups. There is a spectrum of public policies ranging from the migration of high-skilled workers to refugees. For the Migration Studies, national borders provide a form of social closure. Traditionally, Borders refer to issues that are fundamental to political community (state sovereignty, territorial delimitation, national security, political identity). And for this reason, borders are also instruments for regulating flows, policy tool for inclusion/exclusion. Several authors have pointed out a form of gap between Border Studies and Migration Studies. That there was a lack of cross-fertilization between these two research traditions. And some populist and nationalist discourses can exploit the ambivalence of the borders and the confusion around it. In this episode, Oliver Schmidtke joins BIG_Lab to discuss all the relations between democracy, migration, and borders and get answers to some important questions.

Listen to Part One: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Listen to Part Two: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Oliver Schmidtke is a Professor in the Departments of Political Science and History at the University of Victoria where he also holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European History and Politics. He received his PhD from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. He taught at the Humboldt University Berlin before joining UVic in 2000 and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Bonn University, the European University Institute, and Hamburg University.