Does migration improve the lives of migrants and give them new opportunities or subject them to systems of oppression/exploitation or inequality?

Purpose of assignment:
The purpose of this assignment is to write an essay discussing the extent to which global migration
has positive and/or negative consequences and whether the positive consequences outweigh the
negative ones or vice versa.
Issues and questions to consider when writing the essay:
This assignment is asking you to address the extent to which global migration/immigration has
positive and negative consequences. The essay can also have an argument about whether the
positives are stronger than the negatives, etc. The interesting aspect of this paper will be what kind
of balance you will strike between the positive and negatives or whether you find regularities in
them (that is, are the positive consequences of immigration of a certain type versus its negative
consequences)? You may also address ways in which the negative consequences of
migration/immigration can be reduced or alleviated for the immigrants themselves or for the host
society.
When assessing these issues, you can examine the various economic, social, and political impacts of
immigration on the host/receiving society (including how governments/the public responds to
immigrants) and the various economic and social impacts of migration on the immigrants themselves
and their communities (including transnational ones). You may also look at how the
positive/negative consequences of migration (and the balance between positives and negatives) vary
for different types of migrants (economic versus refugee, unskilled versus skilled, legal versus
illegal, or in terms of different ethnicities of immigrants, etc.). Does migration improve the lives of
migrants and give them new opportunities or subject them to systems of oppression/exploitation or
inequality? Does it provide critical resources and benefits for the host society, or does it cause more
disruption and problems? How can we reduce some of the negative consequences of migration?
Since there are so many issues and questions that you can address for this essay topic, you obviously
cannot discuss everything. The TA(s) will not grade you on exhaustiveness (how many different
issues the paper addresses). It is better to focus closely on a few major issues.
Instructions and suggestions:
The assignment is based only on course materials from Module 2 and does not require you to
interview anyone, do fieldwork, or gather additional information (through the internet, etc). Before
you begin writing the assignment, closely review all relevant materials from this module (lectures,
readings, videos) and take relevant notes about the various positive and negative consequences of
migration. It may be useful to organize your notes under these two categories. Then analyze the
notes you have taken and come up with an overall argument about these two consequences of
migration.
Essays should not just resemble a laundry list or scorecard that lists the various good/bad aspects of
immigration in a random way, but must have a clear and coherent central argument (a thesis
statement or your general answer to the overall topic/question). This could be an argument about
whether certain types of consequences of immigration are positive while other types are negative and
whether the consequences are more positive or more negative for the host society compared to the
consequences for the actual immigrants. It could be an argument about whether the positives
generally outweigh the negatives (or whether this depends on the type of immigrant, etc.) or an
argument that includes ways to mitigate the negative consequences.
This specific central argument should be clearly stated in the first introductory paragraph. It should
not be simply a restatement of the essay topic (In this essay, I will discuss the positive and negative
aspects of migration, etc.). Instead, it should more specifically indicate what exactly you will argue
in the paper. Compelling arguments are not always based on extreme positions (e.g., immigration
only has negative consequences without any positive benefits etc.), but are more nuanced and
conditional arguments that examine both sides of an issue.
Your overall argument should be divided up into a number of key points and analyzed in succession
in your body paragraphs. Therefore, the various points that you make in your body paragraphs
should be related to each other and should be unified and directly relevant to the main argument that
you stated in the introduction. Good papers tend to go somewhere, with one point leading or
building to the next, instead of being a collection of miscellaneous issues. Also, if the essay is not
logically organized or tends to wander without a firm direction, its effectiveness is reduced.
Your essay should not be based mainly on vague statements. You must provide support and
evidence for your essays argument and your various points by constantly drawing from material
covered in the module. At the same time, make sure you

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