Political Science

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. The course presents the main theories and empirical research on migration drawn from sociology, but with an interest in the contributions coming from history, demography, economy, political science, and anthropology, when needed. The course is centered on the European case, with an Italian focus, but within a broader comparative framework including the main active migratory systems in the contemporary world, and a period dating back no less than to the beginning of the twentieth century.

This course compares the political ecologies of Spain and California, two regions of the world with significantly different environmental histories, political systems, and socio-economic and political actors but strikingly similar Mediterranean type ecosystems. In particular, this course focuses on two crucial environmental issues for both these regions—water and land use—and how these have emerged as central items in the political agendas in both regions. The course explores the nature of the so-called “water wars” in California and Spain and how both regions have attempted to reconcile conflicting public and private interests over water use rights. It also looks at landscape planning and how urbanization has often ignored crucial ecological disturbance processes, such as landscape fires, with unforeseen and often catastrophic consequences. The class excursions include a visit to the public company that provides water to the Madrid region, the Canal de Isabel II, to learn about water policy in Madrid, and to the chestnut forest ecosystems of two different autonomous regional community governments in Avila and Madrid to witness the diverging impacts of different governance policies on the same natural system. A meeting with representatives of the Ministry of the Environment to learn about landscape planning is also scheduled.

This course introduces the looming energy challenges faced by the world economic system, as access and control of energy resources are a key stake in the world's geopolitics while climate change issues, resource scarcity, and their foreseen impacts drive the existing energy model to a potential crisis. The first part of the course examines the links between energy systems and social and economic models of our societies. It then explores the current energy transition dynamic and assesses its perspectives and impacts by studying different scales. The last part of the course addresses the ongoing changes in energy geopolitics and their links with climate issues.

This course enables students to understand the ways in which race has been used as a mode of resistance to various inequalities generated by capitalism. The course teaches students about how capitalism has to be seen through the prism of racial capitalism and draws attention to how anti-racist forms of resistance have targeted the historical entanglement of race and class.