Introduction to the course programme

Tentative contents: concept, workload in term of hours, structure of the course, intermediate and final examinations. Migration processes and patterns have profoundly changed in the recent years and proliferated due to various reasons. Focusing on people on the move, the New Mobilities Paradigm provided a paradigmatic shift from a sedentarist perspective to an approach that takes mobilities more seriously, but simultaneously reminds us also to address the other side of the coin, i.e., fixities and staying. Staying for a certain period of times offers opportunities for interactions with people and the localities, which then may result in impacts. More recently, researchers have devoted increasing attention to the spatial distribution of migrants, since rural and mountain areas appeared as so-called New Immigrant Destinations (Winders 2014; McAreavey & Argent 2018), while a self-sustaining and continuous influx of people could be identified there as well (Rodríguez-Pose & von Berlepsch 2020, in the context of rural USA).

Processes and protagonists are quite diverse, including forced, labour, family and lifestyle migrants. Their interaction with local structures and actors are similarly diverse. For a structured analysis of migrant impacts, we suggest to derive from integration dimensions, suggested by Ager & Strang (2008), i.e., housing, education, employment and health, but also facilitators, such as social contact or local knowledge as a starting point. As a peculiarity for rural areas, spatial mobility is addressed as crucial.