Migration and Social Justice Study Abroad

Since 2022, I have co-led a two-week Migration and Social Justice study abroad to the University of Oxford with Sean Palmer, Director of UNCW’s Upperman African American Studies Center. The study abroad focuses on past and present realities of racism, inequality, and empire through faculty, NGO, and activist workshops and immersive field study activities.

We go on walks around Oxford to consider aspects such as the politics of imperial commemoration, which gloss over the violence of the UK’s role in transatlantic slavery. Students discuss the resurgence of imperial nostalgia in contemporary immigration debates. We visit stately homes and museums in Oxfordshire to think through imperial legacies and empire at home, as well as debating what a decolonized museum space could look like. We have field trips to Bath and London where we explore Lewisham’s Migration Museum through to artworks in the Tate Modern’s collection. With foodways trips to local markets and eateries down Cowley Road and Brick Lane, students also experience Oxford and London through the culinary lens of diasporic communities.

All in all, the study abroad encourages experiential understandings of migration and borders through inclusive and anti-racist pedagogy that challenges common stereotypes of Oxford (and other ‘ivy league’ institutions) as inaccessible.

We are committed to applying for grants to cut costs and provide scholarship opportunities for BIPOC and first generation students.

In the 2023-24 academic year, we expanded the Migration and Social Justice study abroad to Cape Town with the University of the Western Cape and local NGOs and organizers focused on supporting asylum seekers and refugees, as well as those combatting the legacies of apartheid and effects of gentrification in the city. Students took part in Cape Malay cooking workshops and migration foodways journeys at local markets, topped off with trips to the Stellenbosch and Cape Peninsula regions!