This event puts Critical Border Studies in conversation with Postcolonial and Critical Race Studies to detect the colonial logic of former empires that lives on in the EU border discourse, policy, and practice. The panellists will pose several questions about the relationship between Europe’s border/ing and Europe’s past and present colonialisms:
- What role does racialized violence, past and present colonialisms of EU and its member states play in EU border security today?
- What does the European border look like from the other side?
- What kind of relationships does the border create between the EU and those who attempt to cross it?
- What kind of Europe has emerged from its border practices?
The event offers a novel reading of the European Union that challenges the normative and liberal theories of the EU. Empirically, what happens at Europe’s borders delivers knowledge on the colonial impulses of coercion, imposition, and control over foreign territories and populations. Theoretically, the study of border brings the story of race, violence, and imperialism back to the account of an integrating Europe and the global order it produces in the process of bordering. It reveals that through its border, the EU re-enacts the past colonial practices of its members, former empires, and re-entrenches them in a hierarchical global order of the present.
On the eve of elections to the European Parliament in which migration features high on electoral agendas, and at time when the new EU Pact on Migration is put in place, the LSE European Institute and the Brussels-based European Network Against Racism (ENAR) join hands with critical scholars to examine the interactions between border practices and the character of the EU. They explore how the new lines of inclusion/exclusion drawn in Europe’s peripheries and on distant shores inform the political identity of the EU.
For more information about this event visit our event page.
See below for the full programme and further details about the panels and talks.
Registration is now open here.
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Programme
Thursday 23rd May 2023
LSE Campus and Online
10:30am - 5:30pm BST
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10:30am
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Refreshments
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11:00am-12:30pm
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Race in Europe’s Migration Law & Policy - Panel
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12:30pm-1:00pm
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Lunch (Sandwich lunch)
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1:00pm-2:30pm
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Violence in Europe’s Borders - Panel
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2:30pm
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Refreshments
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3:00pm-4:30pm
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Externalising, outsourcing and offshoring: Past and present colonialisms in Europe’s Borders - Panel
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4:30pm-5:30pm
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The Borders of Paradise - Film screening and Q&A with Film Producer
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5:30pm
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Reception
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Race in Europe’s Migration Law & Policy - Panel
As the European Union passes the New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum - designed to overhaul EU policies on migration, asylum, integration, and border management - this panel explores what these new and stricter laws mean for migrants themselves and what they in turn tell us about the nature of European integration. It discusses the new norms that migration policies normalize whereby migration is racialized, and the defence of human rights is increasingly criminalized. It asks what kind of Europe is emerging from these policies and what race has got to do with it.
Speakers:
Centering racism and colonialism in Europe’s migration policies - Emmanuel Achiri, European Network Against Racism, Brussels
From Political to Migration-Based Conditionality in the EU Development Policy: ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’? - Janine Silga, Dublin City University
Border abolitionism: migration containment and the genealogies of struggles - Martina Tazzioli, University of Bologna
Violence in Europe’s Borders - Panel
This panel examines how violence is an integral part of Europe’s border work and how it manifests in multiple ways: from direct and physical violence of co-ordinated and systematic pushbacks to structural, slow, and socially embedded violence of European legal framework that deprives rights and protection, to cultural violence of Europe’s discourse on people on the move. It also explores epistemic struggles that take place at Europe’s borders to unsettle the invisible infliction of harm though dominant discourses and knowledge production.
Speakers:
Bordering Humanity, Securing Whiteness: Race, Colonialism, and Violence at the European Borders - Tarsis Brito, LSE
Pushbacks and Border Violence: The Silent Central Pillar of EU Migration Policy - Hope Barker
Liberal governance and racial violence of the European Union’s border regime - Arshad Isakjee, Liverpool University, Thom Davies, Nottingham University, Jelena Obradovic-Wolchnik, Aston Unisversity
Externalising, outsourcing and offshoring: Past and present colonialisms in Europe’s Borders - Panel
This panel explores how the new lines of inclusion/exclusion drawn on distant shores affect those they target, and how they inform the political identity of the EU and its members. It poses questions about the relationship between border/bordering and the colonial: what role does racialized violence, past and present colonialisms of European nation states play in EU border security today? What does the European border look like from the other side of the border? What kind of relationships does the border create between the EU and those affected by it? And above all, what kind of Europe is emerging from its border practices?
Speakers:
Between Imperialism, Migration, and Security Landscape in Libya: Examining EU-Italy-Libya Relations - Magda El Ghamari, Collegium Civitas
What is Rwanda? - Nadine El-Enany, University of Kent
Imperial Europe: The African Dimension of European Union Migration Policy - Eva Polonska, LSE, Patrick Kimunguyi, LSE
The Borders of Paradise - Film Screening and Q&A with Zara Gounden, Film Producer
After being rescued in the sea, thousands of migrants are left in uncertainty as they attempt to settle in Europe. In addition to the physical and psychological obstacles ahead of them, they must also confront the visceral and traumatic journey they have left behind.
‘The Borders of Paradise’ a documentary film produced by Zara Gounden, follows these new arrivals in Europe.
Followed by Q&A with Zara, the film producer.