Cultural Politics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Date and Time
"Managing Unhospitality: Borders and Border-Work at Europe's Doorsteps"
This event has been cancelled.
Speaker:
Achille Mbembe, Senior Research Fellow, Center for African Studies, Harvard University; Research Professor in History and Politics, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Contact:
Heather Conrad
hconrad@wcfia.harvard.edu
Chair:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Abstract:
Worldwide, contemporary border work mostly consists in separating the wanted from the unwanted. The EU border regime operates with two rings of externalization. The first ring runs through Southern and Eastern member states. It comprises agencies such as Frontex and relies on the Dublin agreement on asylum according to which every asylum seeker must file for asylum in the country where he or she has entered the EU. The second ring depends on postcolonial border enforcement in North and West Africa. Its purpose is to prevent migrants seeking to get to Europe to not get there in the first place. Using the EU border regime as a starting point, the seminar will reflect on the new types of boundaries born of both globalization and the crystallization of the neoliberal security/surveillance State.