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Since the creation of Schengen in 1985, the European Union and individual member states have found ways to externalize their border control policies to other neighboring countries, including those of the Middle East and North Africa. This course examines the consequences of this externalization for MENA countries, and their transformation from countries of migrant transit to important migrant and refugee host states.

The course is divided into three parts. Part I provides an analytical framework for approaching the course and the topic of migration in the Middle East specifically. Part II focuses on the consequences of EU border externalization for MENA host states between 2010 and 2015 in terms of domestic and regional politics, societal transformations, and the lives of individual migrants and refugees. Part III looks at the impact of Europe’s attempts to manage migration in the wake of the European refugee ‘crisis.’ We will cover the EU-Turkey deal, the Valetta Summit on Migration, and the more recent deal with Libya, and will discuss how to conceptualize new attempts at migration management such as the Global Compact for Migration. Through academic literature, journalistic accounts, film clips, lectures, and case studies, students will gain in-depth knowledge and about the important transformation of Middle Eastern and North African ‘transit’ countries into key migrant and refugee host states, and will develop analytical tools for examining the impact migration has on societies, domestic politics, international relations, and local and regional economies.

About the Instructor: Kelsey Norman is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for European Studies and the Department of political science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. During the 2017-2018 academic year; she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Sié Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the University of Denver.

Her research examines the Middle East and North African countries as sites of migrant and refugee settlement and she is currently working on a book manuscript titled, "Reluctant Reception: Understanding Host State Migration and Refugee Policies in the Middle East and North Africa." The book is based on four years of conducting more than 150 interviews in Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon with government officials, NGOs, intergovernmental organizations, and individual migrants and refugees. Her work has been published by peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Mashriq and Mahjar: Journal of the Middle East and North African Migration Studies, International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Refugee Review, Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture and The Postcolonialist, as well as by media and policy outlets including Jadaliyya, Muftah, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Political Violence at a Glance, and The Washington Post.

She has taught courses and guest lectured on migration and the Middle East at the University of Denver, Loyola Marymount University, and the University of California, Irvine.

In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute as a result of conflict or persecution,” (UNHCR 2017), the crisis became an epidemic in catastrophic proportions. It is widely recognized that the face of this crisis and the refugee landscape has changed greatly over the last decade. Refugees are less often concentrated in the traditional camps, and more often are living in urban areas, especially large cities. This change in the landscape adds further psychosocial issues to consider, particularly, integration into communities and access to resources. Most of the guidelines and recommendations for psychosocial interventions are directed at those refugees living in camps, and it is recognized that this needs urgent addressing.

This course aims to bring those working with refugees and forced migrants together to develop a greater understanding of the needs, experiences, psychosocial and mental health interventions available to this ever-growing and under-serviced population, with a particular focus on displaced individuals living in urban areas. Whilst many refugees are able to great resilience and cope effectively, others in more vulnerable situations are less able to, and are at increased risk of mental health and social problems. Those with existing mental health issues are at great risk of the worsening and prolonging of such issues, given the circumstances in which they find themselves and a lack of access to appropriate resources.

This course will also familiarize participants with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Guidelines on mental health and psychosocial support in emergency settings. The levels of interventions will be explored focusing on psychological first aid, basic counseling skills and the identification and sharing of referrals and cases.

About the Instructor: Kate Ellis is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and the Graduate Director of the Psychology Department at The American University in Cairo. She is a qualified clinical psychologist who completed her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Canterbury Christ Church University, in England. Ellis works predominantly with refugees and individuals who have experienced trauma. Her research focuses on the impact of violence and conflict, with a particular focus on young people, which was the focus of her first PhD awarded by the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. Ellis is also the course coordinator of the Leadership in Mental Health course, Eastern Mediterranean Region, held annually at the AUC. This course was developed in collaboration with the WHO, in order to provide training to mental health professionals in the region, with the aims of up-scaling mental health services and putting mental health on the national health agenda in under-resourced countries low economic status countries.

The course will provide post-graduate students, international agency staff, NGO workers, lawyers and others working with refugees or interested in refugee issues with an introduction to the international legal framework which governs the protection of refugees. Through lectures, case studies and small group discussions, course participants will learn about the basic features of international refugee law through the lens of the 1951 Refugee Convention, looking at the elements of the definition(s) of "refugee," who is excluded from the definition, the role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the process by which refugee status is determined, the rights of refugees under international law, the ethical and professional obligations of those representing refugees, and other issues of refugee policy. A background in law is useful but not required.

About the Instructor: Parastou Hassouri, Refugee and Migration Law Consultant, she has previously taught international refugee law at The American University of Cairo and has extensive experience in the field of international refugee law and refugee and immigrant rights and migration policy. Parastou has served as a consultant with different UNHCR operations in the Refugee Status Determination, Resettlement and Protection Units in Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, and the Russian Federation. She has served as a research consultant for NGO's including the Global Detention Project, where her research focused on migration-related detention in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Prior to that, as a consultant for Human Rights First, she conducted extensive research on the resettlement of Iraqi refugees out of the Middle East to third countries. She has worked as a Legal Advisor and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Focal Point at Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA) in Cairo. Her experience in the United States includes serving as an Attorney-Advisor at the Immigration Courts of New York City and Los Angeles and working as an immigration attorney in private practice in New York City. In addition, she designed and directed the Immigrant Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, where she focused on responding to ethnic profiling and other forms of anti-immigrant backlash in the United States in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11. She also occasionally writes on the topic of refugee and migration policy.