Summary description: 

The module explores three main themes related to precarious urban environments and uncertain urban futures: navigating borders, making work outside the wage, and social belonging.

Module aim & longer description:

This module offers MSc students a chance to explore a range of themes and debates concerning precarity in urban environments. The term ‘urban environment’ in the module title is deliberately open, as it relates to questions regarding infrastructure, borders, labour, and embodied practices in urban settings, with a particular focus on everyday geographies of uncertainty, adaptation and improvisation taking place in cities where certain individuals and communities are experiencing the effects of austerity measures, inequality, resource scarcity. Traveling theoretically and empirically across cities of the global North and South, the module is structured across 3 themes: 1) we explore debates and theories related to precarity, urban informality, bordering, and marginality across Global North and South; 2) we examine the rapidly changing relationship between people and work in urban environments, especially for those engaging in non-waged work; 3) we consider ways in which individuals and communities on the edges of formal political, economic, and social life negotiate belonging, place and home in cities. In the past, this module has benefited from a diverse group of students from across MSc programmes, including Migration Studies, Urban Studies, EPS, and MSc students from the UCL Bartlett.

Mode of teaching:

The course is usually taught through 10 two-hour sessions. Each seminar combines lecture-based content delivery, and different methods of engagement to further develop students’ confidence and skills in discussion/analysis. Seminar preparation will involve up to three paper-length readings. Although these weekly readings will not be formally evaluated, good preparation will facilitate and enhance in-class discussion of key concepts and the quality of student interaction, as well as provide a valuable foundation for the summative assessment.

Assessment:

As part of the formative assessment, each week, three students will have the opportunity to prepare a short informal presentation on one of the readings to kick-start group discussion. As part of the summative assessment, throughout the term, students will engage in a 10-hour field exercise involving ethnographic methods (e.g. participant observation & a life history interview with one interlocutor) in a context of their choosing. They will be encouraged to keep a field notebook for observational notes and on-going reflective writing, which will serve as empirical material for their final essay. Towards the end of the term, students will have an opportunity to present their fieldwork insights and show how these connect to the themes and concepts of the module. As a class, we’ll engage in a final ‘writing workshop’ to kick-start the final essay assessment and engage in some peer to peer review and feedback.

The final assessment is a 3,000-word essay that will be due at the start of T3. The skills assessed through this assignment are those of critical and close reading, reviewing and evaluating theoretical literature, reflecting on the construction, application and limitations of ethnographic research (drawing on their short piece of fieldwork using ethnographic methods), as well as conducting literature searches on cited material that will help students situate their empirical work in relation to the academic literature. The aim is to get students thinking about this essay early in the term, and making the connection between fieldwork and writing.

Learning outcomes:

Students who have completed this module will: 1) Understand a set of intellectual debates concerning the relationship between precarity and contemporary urban environments; 2) Possess knowledge of various conceptualizations of informality, makeshift urbanism, improvisation that enable critical assessment of contemporary scholarship; 3) Give students an opportunity to design a short piece of fieldwork (circa 10 hours) in a London location including participant observation and life history interviewing, and reflect on what is involved in ‘doing’ urban ethnography as a form of research (including thinking seriously about ethics & positionality) and as a writing practice.