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Speakers: Apostolis Fotiadis (researcher), Rahmane Idrissa (political scientist), Muhammad al-Kashef (human rights lawyer and migration activist), Angela Melitopoulos (artist/filmmaker), Nandita Sharma (activist scholar)
This programme, organised by research group System of Systems with the support of RLS Greece, brings together activists, legal practitioners, artists and researchers to explore the rapid externalisation of Europe’s borders under EU policy, relating these strategies to ongoing colonial practices of extraction and domination.
The discussion will focus on how border externalisation systematically violates human rights , how the strategy exists in a legal grey zone, as well as the ways it affects neighbouring countries. The outsourcing of EU borders effectively operates as an outsourcing of coercion, detention, surveillance and control. This has been an ongoing practice, carried out through the building of infrastructure and huge investment in ‘third countries’, implementing preventive measures on behalf of Europe. Locating this conversation in Greece – a country on the edge of Europe that is both an internal border and peripheral country with a complicated relationship to the European north—makes this discussion a pertinent site from which to examine the way the European Union (and its Member States) pushes Europe’s borders beyond its shores. The programme aims to critically examine the effects of border externalisation while situating such strategies historically, theoretically and politically.
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Details
All levels of experience and interest welcome.
The event will be live streamed on YouTube. Detailed instructions on how to join will be provided for those attending.
19.00 – 20.30 – presentations
20.30 – 21.15 – live Q + A
20.30 – 21.15 – live Q + A
Language
The programme will be presented in English with Greek and English subtitles.
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Speakers
Apostolis Fotiadis is a researcher on EU policy issues. He is based in Athens, Greece.
Angela Melitopoulos is an artist based in Berlin who has made experimental video-essays, installations, documentaries and sound pieces since 1985. She studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf with Nam June Paik and holds a Ph. D. in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University in London.
Rahmane Idrissa is a senior researcher and political science professor at Leiden University’s African Studies Centre. He also runs EPGA, a think tank in Niamey (Niger) that focuses on socio-politcal issues from a political-economy angle. He has worked on the politics of Islam in the Sahel, migration and security issues in West Africa, and develops a research agenda on state-building in the region, past and present.
Muhammad al-Kashef is an Egyptian human rights lawyer and migration activist. He was granted political Asylum status in 2018. He is a member of Watch the Med – Alarm Phone and works as an advocate and an independent consultant researcher on the field of migration policies and on EU affairs with North African countries. He has a long experience on community organising and migratory routes from Africa to Europe. He writes studies and reports for different NGOs and institutions such as EIPR, EuroMed Rights, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and ‘Border Criminologie’ at Oxford University. Also, he is making Rap music!
Nandita Sharma is an activist scholar whose research is shaped by the social movements she is active in, including No Borders movements and those struggling for the planetary commons. She is Professor of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Along with numerous essays in journals and books, Nandita is the author of Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020) and Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006).
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