In-Person and Online Public Event

This event puts Critical Border Studies in conversation with Postcolonial and Critical Race Studies to detect the colonial logic of former empires that lives on in the EU border discourse, policy, and practice. The panellists will pose several questions about the relationship between Europe’s border/ing and Europe’s past and present colonialisms:

- What role does racialized violence, past and present colonialisms of EU and its member states play in EU border security today?

- What does the European border look like from the other side?

- What kind of relationships does the border create between the EU and those who attempt to cross it?

- What kind of Europe has emerged from its border practices?

The event offers a novel reading of the European Union that challenges the normative and liberal theories of the EU. Empirically, what happens at Europe’s borders delivers knowledge on the colonial impulses of coercion, imposition, and control over foreign territories and populations. Theoretically, the study of border brings the story of race, violence, and imperialism back to the account of an integrating Europe and the global order it produces in the process of bordering. It reveals that through its border, the EU re-enacts the past colonial practices of its members, former empires, and re-entrenches them in a hierarchical global order of the present.

On the eve of elections to the European Parliament in which migration features high on electoral agendas, and at time when the new EU Pact on Migration is put in place, the LSE European Institute and the Brussels-based European Network Against Racism (ENAR) join hands with critical scholars to examine the interactions between border practices and the character of the EU. They explore how the new lines of inclusion/exclusion drawn in Europe’s peripheries and on distant shores inform the political identity of the EU.

Find more information on the event page.

To register to attend on Zoom, register here as normal and contact Charlotte at c.e.ennis@lse.ac.uk for Zoom information.