Literatur wird zu Beginn des Semesters bekannt gegeben.

Teilnahmeleistung (Studienleistung): Creation of a logbook in which, for each session, students will draw a parallel between a philosophical concept studied in class and an artistic work (film, novel, comic, photograph, etc.). They can accompany this text with images of their own realization (drawings, collages, etc.).

Angebotene Prüfungsformen (Bitte beachten: Abgabemöglichkeit immer innerhalb des jeweiligen Semesters): Philosophical essay (in English or German)

Within the last two decades, migration has become a central subject in the philosophy of justice. On the one hand, normative theorists have more and more taken into account the fact that social justice could not only be apprehended from the perspective of a single political community like it is in John Rawls’ Theory of Justice: it should also address obligations towards non-members coming from other societies (Carens, Miller). On the other hand, critical theorists have realized that Foucault’s theory of governmentality as well as the Marxist theory of exploitation could be used to understand the way people’s movements across borders are being managed through techniques aimed at attracting the most productive agents and excluding the less „desirable“ ones (De Genova, Tazzioli, Mezzadra, Neilson).

Migration theories are often construed as belonging to political theory and social sciences. Through the reading and the analysis of key texts of this literature, we will try to unfold their philosophical dimension. First of all, we will analyze how new concepts, such as encampment, humanitarian reason, and differential exclusion have emerged from these approaches; and old ones, such as refugee, hospitality, border, and exploitation, have been reinvigorated. Second of all, we will try to explain their concrete, sometimes existential, meaning. To do that, we will rely not only on statistics and the economy, but also on artistic representation (mostly cinema, but also art and literature). Our hypothesis is that the way these works depict the experience of exiles, be it in camps, at the border, or in their interactions with „natives“, gives us a deeper insight into the matters at stake than a mere summary of social data. Language: English