In the last decade, a surge of European efforts to outsource border control measures to third countries have aimed to constrain and confine migration from the global South towards Europe. Such externalization processes are often portrayed as a one directional push enforced by Europe upon third countries. However, we are equally witnessing a myriad of ways in which European externalization politics have opened a room of maneuvering for ‘partner countries’ to negotiate and circumvent the rules of the game. Revising the one-directional view of externalization, this seminar focuses on the processes through which countries in Europe’s extended borderlands challenge, cope with and profit from European fears of mass migration. The presentations in the seminar address the following themes: How do migration politics lead to novel social, political, and security arrangements that increase precarity and violence for migrants but also feed back into European policy making and geopolitical positioning? How can we conceptualize the cracks in externalization: the resistance and foot dragging that often characterize the agency and response of partner countries and local authorities, but also the autonomous response of migrants? How new forms of migrant illegality and deportability reconfigure the everyday experiences far away from Europe’s geographical borders. What role does international organizations and humanitarian actors play in the externalization processes?

 

Wednesday 8 June

 

 

 

10.00-10.15 Welcome and Introduction to the Workshop
Hans Lucht and Ida Marie Vammen, Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS 

 

10.15-12.30 Session 1 : Institutionalising Externalisation in Migration Governance

Chair: Ida Marie Vammen

 

1. ‘Externalization and communication: Voluntary Returns, Information Campaigns and Contested Public Spheres of Global Migration Governance’ - Antoine Pécoud, Professor, Sciences Po CERI 

 

2. ‘Institutionalising post-deportation reception: the social aspect of externalisation?' - Clara Lecadet, Researcher, anthropologist, Center of political anthropology (CNRS-EHESS)

 

 

3. Neocolonialism and the politics of migration between Africa and Europe’ - Hannah Cross, Senior Lecturer, University of Westminster

 

Discussants: Loren Landau & Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye

 

 

14.30-16.00 Session 2: Contested Humanitarianism and Anti-Externalisation 

Chair: Luis Martinez 

 

 

Discussants: Hans Lucht & Clara Lecadet

 

Thursday 9 June

1. 'Containment, chronoscopy & combatting migrant ‘immoralities’' - Loren B Landau, Professor, ODID, University of Oxford

 

2. ‘Rebranding migration and framing new beginnings: reflections on EU’s aspiration management and affective borderwork in Senegal’ - Ida Marie Savio Vammen, Postdoc, 

 

Discussants: Antoine Pécoud & Alessandro Corso 

 

 

11.20-12.30 Session 4: The everyday life of border externalization and cross-border informality 

Chair: Hannah Cross 

 

1. "The Theatre of the Absurd: A dangerous imitation of reality" - Alessandro Corso, ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford

 

2. ‘'There are a thousand ways to Libya': EU-Driven Border Control in Agadez, Niger’ - Hans Lucht, Senior researcher, Danish Institute for International Studies  

 

Discussants: Paolo Cuttitta & Almamy Sylla 

 

 

14.30-16.00 Session 5: Negotiating sovereignty in EU/African relations: state actors and strategies  

Chair: Alessandro Corso

 

1. ‘En Route to Europe?  The Anti-politics of Deportation from North Africa to Mali’ - Almamy Sylla, Lecturer, Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (ULSHB)

 

Discussants: Hannah Cross & Ahlam Chemlali 

 

16.00-17.00 Final plenary discussion and concluding remarks  

Chair: Hans Lucht