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Waar: UvA, Amsterdam, Netherlands (GPS lat: 52.370216 lon: 4.895168)
Wanneer: 22/02/2013 - 12:30 t/m 23/02/2013 - 22:00

Deportation, Detention, Drowning in la Mer Mortelle: Critical Perspectives on the Irregularization of Migration

Workshop at the University of Amsterdam

22nd – 23rd February 2013

(Via http://www.nettime.org/ )

Deportation, Detention, Drowning in la Mer Mortelle: Critical Perspectives on the Irregularization of Migration

Workshop at the University of Amsterdam

22nd – 23rd February 2013

‘Borders have guards and the guards have guns’ is the opening phrase of a famous article by
moral philosopher Joseph Carens pleading for open borders in 1987. Borders did not open.
Instead, borders are no longer at the border, Étienne Balibar argued in 1998, and since several
years, the border is everywhere. With this workshop we seek to address the cultural, political and
normative dimensions of three concurrent developments: the transformation of our understanding
of borders, the progressive irregularization of migration in the EU, and the increasingly violent
policies and practices at the EU’s borders. The irregularization of migration and the increase of
border policing constitute a process parallel to the free flow of commodities and money in a
globalized economy: the smoothening of mercantile space goes hand in hand with, and indeed
seems to advance, an ever more complex stratification of geographical space and a dismantling
of rights, personhood and political agency. The workshop addresses this often neglected
dimension of globalization.

Questions to be addressed will include: Panel I: What are the cultural-political conditions
under which practices of detention, deportation and ‘letting drown’ can become normalized
within the context of the EU? How should normative and critical perspectives on European
policies and cultures of migration take account of the irregularization of migration and the
ubiquity of new borders? Panel II: What are the varieties of irregularization? How do these
varieties impact on the options for resistance against them? Panel III: How do the perspectives,
voices and forms of agency of irregular migrants themselves and of activist networks impact on
EU cultures and policies of regulating migration? What conditions the specific forms of visibility
and invisibility of migrants for the larger European public and how can migrants’ own acts of
citizenship be situated in this field?

Convenors:
• Joost de Bloois
• Robin Celikates
• Ernst van den Hemel
• Yolande Jansen
with the support of ASCA, ACGS, the Department of Philosophy, het Wereldhuis and Spui 25

Programme:

DAY 1: Friday, 22nd February
VOC-Zaal, Bushuis, University of Amsterdam (UvA)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX, Amsterdam

12:30 – 13:00 Registration, tea & coffee

13:00 – 13:15 Welcome: Joost de Bloois & Robin Celikates

Panel I Cultural-Political Conditions of Extremities
Presentations of papers distributed in advance, and comments on each other’s
papers; roundtable with all participants.
Chair: Joost de Bloois (Comparative literature, UvA)

13:15 – 14:30
Nicholas de Genova – Extremities and Regularities: Regulatory Regimes
and the Spectacle of Immigration Enforcement
(Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London)

Henk van Houtum – Remapping the Borders of Apartheid
(Geopolitics of Borders, University of Bergamo & Geopolitics and Political
Geography, Radboud University Nijmegen, & Nijmegen Centre for Border
Research (NCBR))

Yolande Jansen – Deportability and European Public Intellectuals about
Migration
(ACGS/Philosophy, UvA & Theology/Socrates Foundation, VU University)

Henk Wildschut – Shelter
(Photographer and Artist)

14:30 – 14:45 Tea & coffee

14:45 – 16:00
Ruth Sonderegger – Think of the Darkness and the Great Cold: Present
attempts to retrieve persons that were drowned in the past
(Philosophy and Aesthetic Theory, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)

Juan Amaya Castro – Towards a Political Economy of (In)visibility in
Citizenship
(Law, VU University)

Marieke Borren – Illegal Immigrants, the People and the Paradox of
Democracy
(Philosophy, Groningen University)

Elke Uitentuis – Architecture of Exclusion in the Netherlands
(Artist)

Nanda Oudejans – tba
(Law, VU University)

16:00 – 17:00 Panel discussion

20:00 – 22:30
Public Debate in Spui25
Spui 25, Amsterdam
Chair: Ernst van den Hemel & Yolande Jansen
Ruth Sonderegger
Didier Bigo
Sandro Mezzadra
Nicholas de Genova
Followed by a debate with the audience
More information about the public debate can be found at:
http://www.spui25.nl

DAY 2: Saturday, 23rd February
Wereldhuis, Nieuwe Keizersgracht 1a. 1018 DR, Amsterdam, see
www.wereldhuis.org

9:30 – 9:45 Tea & Coffee

Panel II Varieties of Irregularization
Presentations of papers distributed in advance, and comments on each other’s
papers; roundtable with all participants.
Chair: Yolande Jansen

9:45 – 11:00
Didier Bigo – The Professional Guilds of (Smart) Border Management:
Truth Telling about (In)security Assemblages
(War Studies, King’s College London & Sciences Po Paris)

Marie Beauchamps – ‘Terrorism’ and National Identity: Networks and
Borders in the Security Paradigm
(Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA))

Bas Schotel – EU’s Management of Migration Flows and the Rule of Law:
>From individual to migration flow
(Law, UvA)

Huub van Baar - The Perpetual Mobile Machine of Forced Mobility:
Europe’s Roma and the Institutionalization of Rootlessness
(European Studies, UvA)

11:00 – 11:15
Tea & Coffee

11:15 – 12:15
Sonja Buckel – The Rights of the Irregularized: Constitutional Struggles at
the EU’s Southern Border
(Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt am Main)

Polly Pallister-Wilkins – Good Guys, Bad Guys and the Invisible
Inbetween: Humanitarian Border-Control in the Evros Borderland
(Political Science, UvA)

Julien Jeandesboz – Controlling/Capturing: Violence and the
Normalisation of the EU Border Control Apparatus
(Political Science, UvA)

Veit Bader – Kick off for comments
(Philosophy, UvA)

12:15 – 12:45 Roundtable

12:45 – 13:45 Lunch

Panel III Practices of Resistance
Presentations of papers distributed in advance, presentations by artists, activists
and migrants.
Chair: Robin Celikates (Philosophy, UvA)

13:45 – 15:45
Sandro Mezzadra – Borderscapes of Differential Inclusion: Beyond
Exclusion and Citizenship
(Political Theory, Bologna University)

Ieme van der Poel – The Harraga Novel: Representations of a Human
Tragedy from Both Sides of the Mediterranean
(French Studies, UvA)

Sanne Kos, Marcel Maussen en Jeroen Doomernik – Contested policies of
exclusion: municipal governments contra restrictive national immigration
policies in the Netherlands
(Political Science, UvA)

Christian Mommers – Negotiating the Politics of Immigration Detention in
the Netherlands: A View from Civil Society
(Amnesty International Netherlands)

Migrant Activists – Migronomics: Migrants beyond the Victim Status;
Recent Migrant Self-Organization in the Netherlands
(Representatives from het Wereldhuis and from de Vluchtkerk, migrantcommunities
in the Netherlands)

Karel Smouter – interview by Ernst van den Hemel: De Vluchtkerk,
Migrant Self-Organization and New Alliances
(Philosophy and Religious Studies, Amsterdam University College and UU)

15:45 – 16:00 Tea & Coffee

16:00 – 17:00 Panel Discussion

17:00 – 19:30 Dinner at Wereldhuis

19:30 – 22:00
Evening Programme
Chair: Ernst van den Hemel

Sébastien Chauvin – We Work Here, We Stay Here! ‘Sans-Papier’
Workers Striking for Legalisation in France (2008-2010)
(Sociology, UvA)
Followed by screening of the documentary ‘Coming for a Visit – On Vient
Pour la Visite’, by Lucie Tourette, in cooperation with Pierre Barron, Anne
Bory, Sébastien Chauvin and Nicolas Jounin.

Drinks

Participating Artists
• Ad van Denderen (GONOGO, Amsterdam, www.advandenderen.nl)
• Elke Uitentuis (Amsterdam, www.osterholduitentuis.nl)
• Henk Wildschut (Amsterdam, www.henkwildschut.com)

If you wish to attend the workshop on Friday, please send an email to t.t.ip {AT} uva.nl. Penn Ip
(ACGS) will then also give you the information needed to get access to the papers for the
workshop. Papers need to be read in advance, presentations will only be 10 minutes by each
speaker. The address of the workshop website is: www.mermortelle.org. For participation on
Saturday, no registration is needed, but you can register with Penn Ip, so that you can get access
to the papers.