Seminar with Tamara Last on migrant deaths at EU borders, 1-2pm, 22 February 2016

Seminar with Tamara Last on migrant deaths at EU borders, 1-2pm, 22 February 2016

Please join Border Criminologies for a seminar with Tamara Last (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) entitled ‘Counting and Accounting for Migrant Deaths along the Southern External Borders of the EU.’

When: Monday, 22 February 2016, 1-2pm

Where: Seminar Room A, Manor Road Building, Manor Road, University of Oxford, OX1 3UQ

Abstract: The Deaths at the Borders Database is the first compilation of official, state-produced data about people who have died attempting to cross the Southern external borders of the EU and whose bodies were recovered in, or brought to, European soil. The information has been gathered primarily from death certificates registered in the civil registries of municipalities in Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta, and Greece, that border non-EU countries. Previously, the only data available on ‘border deaths’ was sourced from news media. The Database has revealed two significant findings: Firstly, that the majority of migrants whose bodies are found remain unidentified by the local authorities responsible for their bodies. Secondly, that, with further analysis, the data could reveal trends in migrant mortality that may be used to evaluate the effect of different trends in migration and border policy. In addition to outlining these two preliminary findings, this presentation will discuss the research and methodology behind the Database, and the challenges faced in using the Database to investigate the relationship between migrant mortality and European migration and border policies.

About the speaker: Tamara Last is currently researching a PhD on the relationship between migrant mortality and European migration and border policies as part of the Human Costs of Border Control project at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She has compiled a database of persons whose bodies were found in Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta, or Greece, having died crossing the southern external borders of the EU. Prior to starting her PhD research, Tamara completed an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, and specialized in migration, human rights, and international law during her Bachelors in Law at the University of Warwick. Tamara has previously worked with the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana (on the Migrating Out of Poverty project), the UN Research Institute for Social Development (on regional governance of migrants’ rights), and IOM-Nederland (on the development activities of Ethiopian and Ghanaian diaspora communities in the Netherlands).

All are welcome to attend. Sandwiches and refreshments will be provided.

IRiS Joint Seminar with Tamsin Barber (Oxford Brookes University) and Emma Mitchell (Macquarie University)

IRiS Joint Seminar with Tamsin Barber (Oxford Brookes University) and Emma Mitchell (Macquarie University).
5 November: 2.00-4.00pm, Courtyard Room, Park House, University of Birmingham

This is a joint seminar which draws together two studies concerned with superdiversity, one relating to multicultural perspectives of welfare in the Australian context, and the other concerned with processes of identification among second-generation Vietnamese in a superdiverse context. Further details of the speakers and their studies are below.

To book a place, please contact Ann Bolstridge a.bolstridge@bham.ac.uk<mailto:a.bolstridge@bham.ac.uk>

Dr Tamsin Barber – Oxford Brookes University
‘Oriental’ identities in Super-diverse Britain: the young Vietnamese in London.

A growing scholarship on super-diversity now considers questions of identity, belonging and the visibility of difference within super-diverse contexts (Gidley 2013, Knowles 2013, Wessendorf 2013). Notably, amidst this proliferation of difference, new challenges are raised about how we categorise people and how we might encounter them (Valentine 2013). Taking the focus of everyday lived experiences, this paper interrogates the role of super-diversity in shaping encounters across difference by exploring its dynamic effects upon individual and collective identities and belonging. Using the case study of the British-born Vietnamese as an overlooked and ‘invisible’ minority population in super-diverse London, it raises questions about whether or not super-diversity obscures the boundaries between groups leading to an increased inability to recognise or distinguish between groups and identities, and why this matters. Findings from empirical research with British-born Vietnamese suggest that super-diversity may offer new opportunities for the identity construction of groups (like the Vietnamese) by concealing ‘undesirable’ differences, while at other times, inhibiting these by reinforcing crude distinctions and marking the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (the other/ stranger). The research explores the complex and creative ways in which the British-born Vietnamese are compelled to actively manage their identities within super-diverse contexts to negotiate a range of shifting and contradictory discourses of coercive Orientalisms, racial visibility and public invisibility in Britain.

Biography: I am Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Oxford Brookes University. My research interests are in the area of race, ethnicity, migration and identity and my recent book ‘Oriental Identities in Super-Diverse Britain’ focuses upon the Vietnamese community in Britain.

Emma Mitchell, Macquarie University and Visiting Doctoral Student
Vulnerability in superdiversity

The language of vulnerability is in popular usage in many spheres of public life, not least social policy. However, with the currency of the concept has come critique of the ways in which social groups come to stand as indicators of vulnerability and become categorised as ‘the vulnerable’, standing in for an analysis of the dynamics of vulnerability to specific risks – the how and the what of vulnerability (Levine 2004; Brown 2011). This paper thinks through the resonances of refining the conceptualisation of vulnerability with the (conceptual, methodological and policy) orientations of superdiversity. Superdiversity responds to the primacy of ethnic and racial categories over-determining research design and findings by highlighting increasing diversification in terms of migration and legal status, labour, along with gender and age (Vertovec 2007). Recent efforts to refine the analytic promise of the concept reiterate processes rather than categories of differentiation and diversification (Meissener and Vertovec 2014). Yet both concepts potentially lend themselves to the allure of categorisation when operationalised in social policy, betraying the conceptual promise of dynamic process. The conceptual exercise of relating superdiversity to debates about the rise of vulnerability may help refine the former. It is relevant also given that research on superdiversity remains inclined to focus on dynamics of marginalisation and disadvantage. The paper is drawn from an empirical study of multicultural perspectives of welfare and the cultural politics of welfare reform in Australia.

Biography: I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University. My doctoral research explores diverse moral and material economies of support and how they interact with welfare state provision. In particular I’m interested in how responsibility and vulnerability are experienced and expressed by those who are typically identified as vulnerable and compelled to be responsible in contemporary social policy.

 

Events: RLI Seminar on Asylum in Europe, 23 October 2015

RLI Seminar on Asylum in Europe, 23 October 2015

This year, our 6th annual Refugee Law seminar series at the Refugee Law Initiative addresses the challenges of refugee protection in the EU system. The series is made up exclusively of topical and original presentations from new and exciting researchers in the field, starting this week with…

– ‘FRONTEX Operations and Pre-emptive Humanitarianism: The “Rescue-Without-Protection” Paradigm’
– Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax

– Feiday 23 October 2015, 1800-1930
– Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DR

This timely seminar investigates the different phases in Frontex-coordinated missions at sea and their impact on access to international protection in the EU. It shows how the language of humanitarianism, illustrated by different joint operations in the past 10 years, has been co-opted and de-naturalised to respond to the instant necessities of those found in distress at sea, obviating the causes of flight and the consequences of pre-emption. It demonstrates how a ‘rescue without protection’ paradigm serves to legitimise operations ultimately aimed at preventing departures or deflecting protection seekers to points of embarkation across the Mediterranean, sparing them from the immediate dangers of irregular voyages without (real) opportunities to claim asylum in the EU. The un-sustainability of this approach will be tested against current events following the mass drowning of April 2015, the extension of Triton and the launch of EUNAVFOR Med.

Bio – Violeta Moreno-Lax is the EU Co-ordinator for the RLI. She is a Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary, University of London, where she teaches EU Law and EU Migration Law. She has previously taught at the Universities of Liverpool, Oxford, Louvain, and Nijmegen as well as at the College of Europe. She has also acted as consultant for the European Parliament and the European Commission, and has advised a number of governmental and non-governmental organisations active in the area of refugee and migrant rights. Her current research focuses on the interface between border control, migration management and international protection under EU and international law.

The event is free and open to the public. You can guarantee your place by registering through: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/refugee-law-initiative-university-of-london-3554876155.

 

Events: RLI Seminar Series 2015-16 – Asylum in Europe – Starting Friday, 23 October 2015 (IALS, 6 pm)

RLI Seminar Series 2015-16 – Asylum in Europe – Starting Friday, 23 October 2015 (IALS, 6 pm)

This is to announce the forthcoming Seminar Series on Asylum in Europe hosted by the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London during the current academic year 2015/16.

The first session on access to international protection will take place on Friday, 23 October 2015, from 6 pm at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (London).

All details are below, attached and also available at: http://www.sas.ac.uk/rli/whats-on

Attendance is free, but registration recommended: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/refugee-law-initiative-university-of-london-3554876155

Thank you for spreading the word!

Looking forward to seeing you there,

Violeta Moreno-Lax

PROGRAMME

Access to Protection in Europe: Pre-emptive Humanitarianism and the “Rescue without Protection” Paradigm
Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax, Queen Mary University of London
23 October 2014, 6.00pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Safety Zones in Countries of Origin: A Violation of International Law?
Dr Bríd Ní Ghráinne, University of Sheffield
06 November 2014, 6.00 pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Running Sideways – Has Europe Overdone Distancing Itself from the Geneva Refugee Convention?
Julian Lehmann, Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi)
2 December 2015, 6.00 pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Human Trafficking and Slavery Reconsidered
Dr Vladislava Stoyanova, Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden
19 January 2016, 6.00 pm | Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Terrorism and Exclusion from Refugee Status in the UK: Asylum Seekers Suspected of Serious Criminality
Dr Sarah Singer, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study
29 February 2016, 6.00pm | Conference Room, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

If the stars align: EU law, policy and practice on solidarity and responsibility-sharing for asylum and refugee protection
Madeline Garlick, Radboud University, The Netherlands
4 February 2016, 6.00 pm | Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

EU asylum law and disabled refugees – is the UK reservation to the CRPD in the context of asylum law redundant?
Stephanie Motz, University of Lucerne
16 March 2016, 6.00pm | Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

“Bottom-up” harmonization in the EU asylum policy: the case of EASO
Lilian Tsourdi, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Law and Institute for European Studies
4 May 2016, 6.00pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

RLI Seminar Series 2015-16 – Asylum in Europe – Starting Friday, 23 October 2015 (IALS, 6 pm)

RLI Seminar Series 2015-16 – Asylum in Europe – Starting Friday, 23 October 2015 (IALS, 6 pm)

Download Flyer

This is to announce the forthcoming Seminar Series on Asylum in Europe hosted by the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London during the current academic year 2015/16.

The first session on access to international protection will take place on Friday, 23 October 2015, from 6 pm at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (London).

All details are below, attached and also available at: http://www.sas.ac.uk/rli/whats-on

Attendance is free, but registration recommended: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/refugee-law-initiative-university-of-london-3554876155

PROGRAMME

Access to Protection in Europe: Pre-emptive Humanitarianism and the “Rescue without Protection” Paradigm
Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax, Queen Mary University of London
23 October 2014, 6.00pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Safety Zones in Countries of Origin: A Violation of International Law?
Dr Bríd Ní Ghráinne, University of Sheffield
06 November 2014, 6.00 pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Running Sideways – Has Europe Overdone Distancing Itself from the Geneva Refugee Convention?
Julian Lehmann, Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi)
2 December 2015, 6.00 pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Human Trafficking and Slavery Reconsidered
Dr Vladislava Stoyanova, Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden
19 January 2016, 6.00 pm | Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

 

Terrorism and Exclusion from Refugee Status in the UK: Asylum Seekers Suspected of Serious Criminality
Dr Sarah Singer, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study
29 February 2016, 6.00pm | Conference Room, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
If the stars align: EU law, policy and practice on solidarity and responsibility-sharing for asylum and refugee protection
Madeline Garlick, Radboud University, The Netherlands
4 February 2016, 6.00 pm | Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
EU asylum law and disabled refugees – is the UK reservation to the CRPD in the context of asylum law redundant?
Stephanie Motz, University of Lucerne
16 March 2016, 6.00pm | Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
“Bottom-up” harmonization in the EU asylum policy: the case of EASO
Lilian Tsourdi, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Law and Institute for European Studies
4 May 2016, 6.00pm | L103/104, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Events: Refugee Studies Centre Public Seminar Series

Refugee Studies Centre Michaelmas term Public Seminar Series

Theme: Refugee Economies

Series convenors: Professor Alexander Betts and Dr Naohiko Omata.

In recent academic and policy arenas in forced migration, the issue of how to understand refugees’ economic lives has emerged as one of the most pressing agendas. This seminar series will therefore gather leading scholars who have been working on related issues in order to consolidate the empirical and theoretical knowledge of refugee economies. Speakers will be convened from diverse and inter-disciplinary backgrounds from anthropology, economics, and political science. In addition to knowledge building, this seminar series is intended to initiate nurturing wider networks of researchers working on economic lives of refugees and to establish a common space for exchanging ideas, discussing findings and challenges.

Links to each seminar, as well as speaker biographies, can be found below. Seminars take place on Wednesdays at 5pm in Seminar Room 1, Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, except for the Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture which will take place at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. There is also an additional special seminar on Tuesday 13 October at 1-2pm, details below. For any enquiries, please contact rsc@qeh.ox.ac.uk.

13 October, Special lunchtime seminar, 1-2pm Africa after neo-abolition: asylum politicization, expert testimony, and the legacy of anti-trafficking advocacy Professor Benjamin N. Lawrance (Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, USA)

Location: Meeting Room A, Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/africa-after-neo-abolition

14 October

no seminar

21 October

Refugee economies: forced displacement and development Professor Alexander Betts (RSC) http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/refugee-economies-forced-displacement-&-development

28 October

“Displacement economies: thinking through the paradoxes of crisis and creativity”

Professor Amanda Hammar (University of Copenhagen) http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/displacement-economies

4 November

ANNUAL HARRELL-BOND LECTURE *

‘We do not want to become refugees’: Human mobility in the age of climate change Professor Walter Kälin (Envoy of the Chairmanship of the Nansen Initiative, and Professor of Constitutional and International Law, University of Bern)

Location: Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Registration is required for this lecture. Please contact: anneli.chambliss@qeh.ox.ac.uk

http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/harrellbond2015

11 November

Navigating Nakivale: the borderland economy of a refugee camp Professor Morten Bøås (The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/navigating-nakivale

18 November

The economic consequences of refugee return: evidence from Burundi and Tanzania Professor Carlos Vargas-Silva (COMPAS, University of Oxford) http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/economic-consequences-of-refugee-return

25 November

Being Oromo in Nairobi’s ‘Little Mogadishu’: Eastleigh’s Ethiopian refugees and their livelihoods Dr Neil Carrier (African Studies Centre, University of Oxford) http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/being-oromo

2 December

From macro-economy to political economy: situating the refugee development discourse at the large scale Professor Roger Zetter (RSC) http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/from-macro-economy-to-political-economy

 

CMRB Event: Gender, Fundamentalism and the ‘Prevent Agenda’

The University of East London’s CMRB (Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging) and SOAS’ Centre for Gender Studies are pleased to announce the following seminar:

GENDER, FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE ‘PREVENT AGENDA’

This seminar will take place on Saturday 17th October 2015, 2–5pm, in B102, Brunei Gallery,  SOAS, London, WC1H 0XG
www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/visit/

Speakers:

Tehmina Kazi, British Muslims for Secular Democracy
Irene Zempi, Nottingham Trent University
Aisha Phoenix, Goldsmiths
Rahila Gupta, Southall Black Sisters

The event is free but space is limited so please register at genderfundamentalismprevent.eventbrite.co.uk

More details can be found below:

The University of East London’s CMRB (Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging) and SOAS’ Centre for Gender Studies are pleased to announce the following seminar:

 

GENDER, FUNDAMENTALISM ANDTHE ‘PREVENT AGENDA’

This seminar will take place in B102, Brunei Gallery,

SOAS, London, WC1H 0XG

www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/visit

Saturday 17^th October 2015, 2–5pm

Speakers:

Tehmina Kazi, British Muslims for Secular Democracy

Irene Zempi, Nottingham Trent University

Aisha Phoenix, Goldsmiths

Rahila Gupta, Southall Black Sisters

The event is free but space is limited so please reserve a place at genderfundamentalismprevent.eventbrite.co.uk

For more info on CMRB: uel.ac.uk/cmrb and facebook.com/CMRBuel
For more info on Centre for Gender Studies: http://www.soas.ac.uk/genderstudies/

Speakers Biographies

Tehmina Kazi, British Muslims for Secular Democracy

Tehmina is the Director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy (www.bmsd.org.uk), a group of Muslim democrats working to raise awareness about democracy, particularly secular democracy, within British Muslim communities and the wider public. Tehmina is executive producer of the documentary film Hidden Heart (hiddenheartfilm.com) and was also a freelance consultant for English PEN’s Faith and Free Speech in Schools project. Tehmina is a trustee of Hope Not Hate (www.hopenothate.org.uk), an advisory board member of the Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks (tellmamauk.org) project, an Inclusive Mosque Initiative (inclusivemosqueinitiative.org/about/) committee member, and was a judge for the Accord Coalition’s (accordcoalition.org.uk) Inclusive Schools Award, 2014. Tehmina was named one of the BBC’s 100 Women (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-29758792) in October 2013 and 2014, and held the Eric Lane Fellowship at Clare College, Cambridge from January to March 2014. She is a Centenary Young Fellow of the RSA.

 

Irene Zempi, Nottingham Trent University

Irene is currently working as a Lecturer in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University. Prior to this position Irene was a Teaching Fellow in Criminology at the University of Leicester. She has a PhD in Criminology and an MSc in Criminology from the University of Leicester, and a BSc in Sociology from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, Greece. As a practitioner, Irene has extensive experience working with victims of volume crime, domestic violence, hate crime and anti-social behaviour at Victim Support. For her doctoral research, Irene examined the topic of Islamophobia and the targeted victimisation of Muslim women who wear the niqab (face veil). The study included individual and focus group interviews with niqab-wearing women at mosques, Muslim schools and Islamic centres, as well as an ethnographic approach whereby Irene wore the full veil in public in Leicester. This study was the first ever one to examine the experiences of women wearing the niqab as victims of anti-Muslim hate crime in the UK and therefore is an important piece of work in the field of hate crime studies. Irene has published widely on issues of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime. Her most recent project involves the first ever study to examine both online and offline experiences of anti-Muslim hate crime of ‘visible’ Muslim men and women in the UK, with Dr Imran Awan from Birmingham City University. This study was commissioned and funded by the Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks (Tell MAMA) Project.

 

Aisha Phoenix, Goldsmiths

Aisha Phoenix is completing an ESRC-funded PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London on how Palestinian university students narrate their lives under occupation. Her research is based on interviews she conducted with Muslim young men and women in the West Bank. She has also conducted research on Somali young women sixth form students in the UK and hierarchies of belonging. Her research interests also include colourism; prejudice on the basis of skin shade. She has a Masters in Social Research from Goldsmiths and one in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS. Aisha has worked as a journalist and writes freelance articles. She has a Postgraduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism from City University and a BA in Arabic and Modern Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford University. Her publications include: ‘Colourism and the Politics of Beauty’ (2014), Feminist Review, 108, 97-105; ‘Racialisation, relationality and riots: intersections and interpellations’ (2012), Feminist Review, 100, 52-72 (with Ann Phoenix) and ‘Somali Young Women and Hierarchies of Belonging’ (2011), YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research. Vol. 19, 3: 313-331.

 

Rahila Gupta, Southall Black Sisters

Rahila Gupta is a freelance journalist, writer and activist. In 1989, she joined the management committee of Southall Black Sisters, an advocacy and campaigning women’s group set up in 1979 for women escaping domestic violence and, in 2004, she founded the Nihal Armstrong Trust which funds families of children with cerebral palsy to buy cutting-edge equipment and services. With Kiranjit Ahluwalia she wrote Provoked, the story of a battered woman who killed her violent husband and co-wrote the screenplay based on the book and released as a film in 2007. Her last book, Enslaved, on immigration controls, published in 2007, was said to be ‘one of the most vital books of the new century’. Her verse play Don’t Wake Me: The Ballad of Nihal Armstrong was nominated for three awards and was selected by the British Council as part of their showcase in Edinburgh 2013 and went on tour to USA and India in 2014. Her articles are published in the Guardian, New Humanist, New Internationalist and openDemocracy among other magazines, journals and websites. She is currently working on a radio play inspired by Jimmy Mubenga. Additionally, she and Bea Campbell are hoping to collaborate on a book, Why Doesn’t Patriarchy Die? which will investigate how patriarchy fits with diverse political systems.

 

Special lunchtime seminar, Refugee Studies Centre, Tuesday 13 October, 1-2pm

Please find below details of a special lunchtime seminar at the Refugee Studies Centre on Tuesday 13 October, from 1-2pm (www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/africa-after-neo-abolition ):

Africa after neo-abolition: asylum politicization, expert testimony, and the legacy of anti-trafficking advocacy
Speaker: Professor Benjamin N. Lawrance (Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, USA)

Location: Meeting Room A, Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB

African trafficking survivors struggle with anti-immigrant rhetoric and migration securitization in throughout the Global North. Globalization has elevated the importance of documentation; individuals fleeing trafficking face high thresholds to prove captive, coerced, or imprisoned status. This talk explores asylum politicization in Europe and North America and the role of millennial anti-trafficking advocacy in resisting it. Asylum claims (from Togo, Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria) provide unique insight into how trafficking survivors struggle for recognition as social persons. West African case histories show how experts and lawyers in the US and the UK mobilize documentation to resist anti-migration policy.

This is an additional public seminar, open to all.

About the Speaker
Benjamin N. Lawrance holds the Barber B. Conable Jr. Endowed Chair in International Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, USA. A graduate of Stanford University and University College London, his research interests include comparative and contemporary slavery, human trafficking, cuisine and globalization, human rights, refugee issues and asylum policies. His forthcoming book, Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling (Yale 2015) examines West African child smuggling in the 19th century. His other books examine asylum, refugee issues, expert testimony, historical and contemporary trafficking in women and children in Africa. His essays appear in the Journal of African History, Biography, Slavery & Abolition, African Economic History, Anthropological Quarterly, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, and the African Studies Review, among others. Professor Lawrance is a legal consultant on the contemporary political, social and cultural climate in West Africa. He has served as an expert witness for over two hundred and seventy asylum claims of West Africans in the U.S., Canada, the U.K, the Netherlands, Israel, and many other countries, and his opinions have featured in appellate rulings in the U.S. and the U.K. He volunteers as a country conditions expert for Amnesty International USA.

Event: Black Lives Matter – the implications for the UK context CMRB seminar series – UEL

The Cente for Migration, Refugees ad Belonging at UEL seminar:

Black Lives Matter – the implications for the UK context

CMRB seminar series – ALL WELCOME

4pm to 6pm, Monday 12th October in EBG. 06, East Building, Docklands Campus, UEL

The mass mobilisation against police violence and continuing state racism represented by Black Lives Matter has refocused global attention on the issue of state violence and state-sponsored killings.This event encourages us to consider the UK context and suggests ways forward for campaigners against state racism and violence in Britain.

Speakers:

Adam Elliott-Cooper, Department of Geography, University of Oxford

How #BlackLivesMatter changed resistance

Stephanie Lightfoot-Bennett, United Family and Friends campaign

UFFC is a coalition of those affected by deaths in police, prison and psychiatric custody. UFFC supports others in similar situations.

UFFC hold an annual procession in memory of those who have died in custody. This year the procession will be held on 31 st October 2015. Assemble at 12 noon in Trafalgar Square to march to Downing Street. The organisers ask that you wear black.

 

Event in London with Jon Fox: “The edges of the nation: breaching everyday nationhood”, 13 May 6-7.30pm at LSE campus

Seminar with Jon Fox – The edges of the nation: breaching everyday nationhood
13 May, 6-7.30pm

Location: Kingsway Building (KSW) Room 2.12, LSE Campus

Please contact us if you need directions.

Everyone welcome and no ticket required

Jon Fox will be discussing “The edges of the nation: breaching everyday nationhood”. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol where he researches nationalism, ethnicity, racism, and migration. In particular he is interested in how ordinary people reproduce ethnic, national, and racialised forms of collective belonging in their everyday lives, which will be the focus of this ASEN seminar.

For more information, see ASEN’s website (http://asen.ac.uk/events/seminars/seminar-jon-fox-edges-nation/) and Facebook event page (https://www.facebook.com/events/1586095571671221).

Part of the 2014-15 ‘Everyday Ethnicity, Everyday Nationalism’ seminar series. ASEN (Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism) is an interdisciplinary student-led research association founded by research students and academics in 1990.

 

Tomorrow in Oxford: Human Smuggling Before the Supreme Court of Canada, Prof Catherine Dauvergne

Border Criminologies, the Oxford Human Rights Hub, and the Refugee Studies Centre are co-hosting the following seminar:

Human Smuggling Before the Supreme Court of Canada
Professor Catherine Dauvergne (University of British Columbia, Canada)

When: Wednesday, 6 May 2015, 13:00

Where: Senior Common Room, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford

This talk will explain the constitutional challenge to Canada’s human smuggling laws that was argued before the Supreme Court of Canada in February 2015.  The case asks whether Canada’s criminalization of human smuggling is unconstitutional because it can penalize individuals and groups who assist refugees in seeking international protection in Canada. Catherine Dauvergne provided expert evidence at the trial level in this case, and has watched it closely as a member of the Canada Council for Refugees Legal Affairs Committee.

About the speaker: Catherine Dauvergne works in the area of immigration and refugee law in Canada and around the world. Her research is grounded in a belief that how we define and police the boundaries of our societies determines the terrain of our political engagements and says much about our national identity. Border laws are a space of unabashed discrimination, where aspirations of nationhood are writ large. Dauvergne is both a tactical lawyer and a big picture thinker, and her work shows a commitment to engagement at these scales. Her 2008 book Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means for Migration and Law (Cambridge University Press) is read and taught across disciplines and has been twice reprinted. Dauvergne has co-directed a number of large empirical studies of refugee decision-making around the world and has published three other books and more than fifty articles, chapters, and law review pieces. She is regularly involved in pro-bono legal work for individuals and for refugee- and immigrant-serving organizations. She is also a frequent commentator on these issues for Canadian media. Dauvergne is currently completing a research project investigating the failure of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect non-citizens. In 2012, Dauvergne was named a Fellow of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation.

Seminar in Oxford: Not so Exceptional? Understanding the Canada-US Border as a Place of Law, Arbel & Goold, 11 May

Please join Border Criminologies and the Refugee Studies Centre for a special seminar with Efrat Arbel and Benjamin Goold, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada, entitled:

‘Not so Exceptional? Understanding the Canada-US Border as a Place of Law.’

When: Monday, 11 May 2015, 13:00-14:30

Where: Senior Common Room, Faculty of Law, St Cross Building, University of Oxford

About the seminar

With the steady, global movement towards the securitization of borders in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, scholars across various disciplinary fields have analyzed state borders as ‘states of exception,’ sites in which, as Giorgio Agamben provocatively describes, ‘a temporary suspension of the rule of law on the basis of a factual state of danger, is … given a permanent spatial arrangement, which as such nevertheless remains outside the normal order.’ This paper argues against this approach. It suggests that the ‘state of exception,’ as described by Giorgio Agamben and Carl Schmidt, does not properly account for the legal and material realities of contemporary state borders. The paper advances this argument by analyzing how legal power is organized, asserted, and exercised along the Canada-US border. In addition, it seeks to develop a set of criteria by which claims of exceptionalism at the border might be tested, and compares the border with other sites―such as prisons―which also have the potential to become states of exception. In doing so, it strives to develop a site-specific understanding that better illuminates the legal implications of the policies and practices that currently govern the Canada-US border, and to ensure that current debates properly recognize the role of law in constructing the border.

About the speakers

Efrat Arbel is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia. Dr Arbel researches and publishes in constitutional law, refugee law, Aboriginal law, and prison law. Combining her academic work with legal practice, Dr Arbel is also engaged in advocacy and litigation involving refugee and prisoner rights.

Benjamin Goold is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Academic Affairs, at the University of British Columbia. At present, Professor Goold is working on two major research projects, the first a major field study of undercover policing and covert surveillance practices in the UK (with Bethan Loftus and Shane Mac Giollabhui), and the second a study of how security products are bought, sold, and consumed (with Ian Loader and Angelica Thumala).

Postponed CMRB Event: Sovereignty and Agency in the Post-Ottoman Middle East, Dr. James Renton, Edge Hill University

Please Note:

Dear All,

The seminar, ‘Sovereignty and Agency in the Post-Ottoman Middle East’ by Dr. James Renton, Edge Hill University (details attached) has been postponed. The new time and date will be announced soon.

Best regards,

Jamie Hakim, CMRB

The University of East London’s CMRB (Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging) is pleased to announce the following seminar:

Sovereignty and Agency in the Post-Ottoman Middle East

Dr. James Renton, Edge Hill University

This seminar will take place in EB G.06, Docklands Campus,

UEL, E16 2RD

http://www.uel.ac.uk/about/campuses/docklands/

Monday 27th April 2015, 4–6pm

The event is free but space is limited so please reserve a place at

                                  jamesrenton.eventbrite.co.uk                      

Dr James Renton is a Reader in History at Edge Hill University, and Senior Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. He is the author of The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914-1918 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and is currently writing a history of the idea of the Middle East.

For more info on CMRB: uel.ac.uk/cmrb

CMRB Event: Sovereignty and Agency in the Post-Ottoman Middle East, Dr. James Renton, Edge Hill University

The University of East London’s CMRB (Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging) is pleased to announce the following seminar:

Sovereignty and Agency in the Post-Ottoman Middle East

Dr. James Renton, Edge Hill University

This seminar will take place in EB G.06, Docklands Campus,

UEL, E16 2RD

http://www.uel.ac.uk/about/campuses/docklands/

Monday 27th April 2015, 4–6pm

The event is free but space is limited so please reserve a place at

                                  jamesrenton.eventbrite.co.uk                      

Dr James Renton is a Reader in History at Edge Hill University, and Senior Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. He is the author of The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914-1918 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and is currently writing a history of the idea of the Middle East.

For more info on CMRB: uel.ac.uk/cmrb

 

RSC Events: Global refugee policy | Refugee Studies Centre Public Seminar Series

Source: Forced Migration List – List Archives: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/forced-migration.html

Global refugee policy | Refugee Studies Centre Public Seminar Series, Trinity term 2015
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/trinity-2015
Beginning Wednesday, 29 April

All seminars take place at 5pm in Seminar Room 1, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford Department of International Development. No registration is required* and all are welcome to attend.

Global refugee policy is a formal statement of, and proposed course of action in response to, a ‘problem’ relating to protection, solutions or assistance for refugees or other persons of concern to the global refugee regime. It is discussed and approved within UNHCR’s governing structures, and is intended to either limit the behaviour of governments or guide UNHCR’s activities. Despite the time and resources invested in the making, implementation and evaluation of global refugee policy, and concerns about the elements and implications of particular policies, our understanding of the process that leads to these policies at the global level, and factors affecting their implementation at the local level, is surprisingly limited.

Building on discussions at the RSC’s 30th Anniversary Conference and the December 2014 Special Issue of Journal of Refugee Studies on the topic, this seminar series will examine particular aspects of the global refugee policy process to further our understanding of how global refugee policy is made, implemented and evaluated, and the extent to which a more critical understanding of this process contributes to our ability to influence outcomes.

We also have the Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture this term, further details on which will be announced shortly.

If you’d like to receive updates about our public seminars and lectures, please visit our Connect With Us page and subscribe to our email alerts: www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/RSC-Connect

29 April 2015
Understanding global refugee policy: the case of naturalisation in Tanzania
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/understanding-global-refugee-policy-the-case-of-naturalization-in-tanzania
Dr James Milner (Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Carleton University)

6 May 2015
Better late than never? The evolution and implementation of UNHCR’s urban refugee policy
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/the-evolution-and-implementation-of-unhcrs-urban-refugee-policy
Dr Jeff Crisp (independent consultant) and MaryBeth Morand (Senior Policy and Evaluation Officer, UNHCR)

13 May 2015
Ethnographic understandings of global refugee policy: Looking at policy in practice
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/ethnographic-understandings-of-global-refugee-policy-looking-at-policy-in-practice
Dr Marion Fresia (Professeure assistante, Institut d’ethnologie, Université de Neuchâtel)

20 May 2015
UNHCR’s protection guidelines: What role for external voices?
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/unhcrs-protection-guidelines-what-role-for-external-voices
Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill (Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College)

27 May 2015
Global policy for IDPs: A parallel process?
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/global-policy-for-idps-a-parallel-process
Dr Phil Orchard (Senior Lecturer, Peace and Conflict Studies and International Relations, University of Queensland)

10 June 2015
Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture
www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/Colson2015
Professor Miriam Ticktin (The New School for Social Research)

Please note: There is no seminar on 3 June.

*The 2015 Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture will take place in Seminar Room 3 and is free to attend and open to all, but registration will be required. Information on how to register will be circulated soon.