Program Details

In explaining my trip to friends and relatives, I’ve been asked several times, “What exactly are you doing over there?” In short, I will be on a program through the School of International Training (SIT) that focuses on Migration and Transnational Identity within a North African context. The program helps fulfill some requirements needed for my International Studies minor while providing me the opportunity to expand my knowledge and further my interest in migration studies.

Here is a brief overview of my program (taken from SIT’s website)

“This program examines the factors driving internal and international migration particularly in Morocco and elsewhere in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Students consider how human mobility is shaped by religion, security, youth culture, desertification, poverty, and other pressing issues and how mobility engenders transnational art and multilayered identities.

From the program base in Rabat, students begin thematic coursework, intensive language instruction in both Modern Standard Arabic and with 15 hours of Moroccan dialect, and the Research Methods and Ethics course. Cultural immersion is greatly facilitated through a seven-week homestay with a working or middle class Moroccan family.

Excursions to northern and rural areas of Morocco, as well as to Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, illuminate many different aspects of migration.

Students learn from Moroccan and European academics and policymakers, NGO and human rights activists, artists, and experts in the area of migration as it relates to law, international relations, and development.

Students on this program also choose between a two-week internship with an organization working in the area of migration, building their Independent Study Project (ISP) on the internship experience, or designing an ISP on their own. The ISP provides each student an opportunity to pursue original research on a specific aspect of migration that pertains to the student’s academic interests or personal inclination.”