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For more than a decade, Europe’s attempt at controlling migration has expanded and reconfigured border practices and borderlands in a number of ways. At a glance, it may seem like Europe has managed to get a grip on ‘the migration crisis’ as the number of migrants reaching European shores has decreased. But the reality may be that the ‘crisis’ has been pushed further south. Safe and legal migration routes have been reduced while borderlands, both at the threshold of Europe and stretching deep into Africa, have become increasingly dangerous. Therefor the need for humanitarian interventions that can rescue and save migrant lives is as important as ever. Concurrently, military and security interventions are increasingly framing migrants as a security threat while humanitarian rescue interventions in the Mediterranean Sea are being criminalized.
This DIIS seminar brings together prominent scholars to discuss EU’s expanding border interventions and the humanitarian dilemmas they give rise to. How do they affect and reroute migrants on the move? What kind of humanitarian care hierarchies emerge in these borderlands, and who benefits? Is the safety of migrants better ensured by state presence or absence? What do these interventions and dilemmas tell us about contemporary European politics and the future ahead?
The seminar is funded by and organized together with the ‘Interventions Research Network on Humanitarian Politics and Culture’ - a collaboration between DIIS, CBS and KU.
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