Refugees and Global Public Policy

There are over 40 million refugees in the world. Governments, intergovernmental organizations, civil society actors and other stakeholders have developed a host of public policy, social, and labor market responses to the inflow of refugees. The actions at the global, regional, national, and local levels differ in their nature, scale, and impacts.

Offering a deep immersion into the processes, challenges, and impacts of designing global public policies for refugees and their host communities, Refugees & Global Public Policy provides a mix of theoretical and practical insights into refugee governance that connects global norms, discussions, and challenges with local preferences, priorities, and actions.

The course offers a mixture of seminarstyle discussions, interactions with UN and civil society experts, site visits, and a role-play simulation on refugee camps.

The course’s 15 main sessions are divided over 5 days in 3 weeks: 3 Saturdays, from 9am-5.30pm with a focus on academic sessions and 2 Fridays from 9-5pm with a focus on site visit at the UN and NGOs in New York. A concluding session with group presentations will be held on Friday in week 5.

The global part of the course introduces students to the key notions, norms, and global policy responses in the context of forced migration. Bringing together legal, sociological, policy, and development perspectives, the course advances participants’ understanding of how different actors are involved in the legal and policy regimes with regard to resettlement, healthcare, education, and labor market participation of refugees.

The course emphasizes the agency of refugees and gender differences in the experiences and effects. It addresses the role of multilateralism, international relations, as well as international and regional cooperation. Participants will learn about implications of human rights, gender, and legal statuses, as well as links to humanitarian and development discourses, including the Sustainable Development Goals.

The local part of the course offers a specific understanding of the refugee law and policy in the US, and specifically in New York. Over the past 30 years, the US has admitted more than two million refugees. Half a million in the last decade alone.

Participants will meet with resettlement agencies, United Nations officials, refugee-led organizations, and NGOs promoting economic and social integration in New York City to obtain first-hand perspectives of the policies and prog