Course Description

Europe has decisively shaped the modern world and has been in turn influenced by the global forces it unleashed. The very process of globalization, in fact, can be traced back to eighteenth century enlightened thinkers who dared to think large: imagining one world and one humanity. Yet, we still live in a world of sovereign nation states. States, their borders, and nations themselves are relatively recent inventions and borders have been as often sources of conflict as they have served the aim of maintaining peace and political stability. Yet, in an intensely globalized world, boundaries today may well seem like a relic of the past. To the extent that Europe embodies and cherishes the ideal of “one world,” it appears hypocritical for it, for example, to block off migrants through impenetrable walls and barbed-wired fences. Such policies, cosmopolitans argue, are fundamentally unjust and incompatible with the values that Europe is meant to represent: democracy and freedom.

The course’s ultimate focus is on the function and status of national and European borders and the question of what it means to belong to a political community: who is in, who is out? How and why are people included or excluded? And, what, finally, is the future of a borderless Europe?

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Describe and explain key political terms and concepts such as citizenship, democracy, human rights, nationalism, cosmopolitanism and supranational governance.
2. Understand key historical events and processes that led to the emergence of the current state-system and its limitations.
3. Use relevant knowledge of contemporary European politics to examine competing arguments in favour of nation-state as the most important unit of political organization.
4. Apply their understanding of political philosophy to advance reasoned arguments in favour, or against borderless Europe.
5. Analyze the crisis of the European project and its implications for the wider world and the ideal of cosmopolitan citizenship.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

First semester (Wed)

Course Co-ordinator and Teacher(s)