Dear Colleagues,
I am writing to invite you to attend a workshop to be convened by the Centre on
Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford on Wednesday
23 November. The workshop will be held as part of the COMPAS’ ‘New Asylum
Paradigm?’ research project, which convened its first workshop in June of this
year in order to discuss the emergence of a number of new policy initiatives
that have emerged since 2003, including the EU’s Regional Protection Project,
proposals for transit processing centres, and UNHCR’s Convention Plus
initiative, for example.
The second workshop aims to move beyond a Eurocentric perspective and discuss
the perspective of Southern actors within the current debates. Discussion will
be focused around a paper to be jointly presented by Alexander Betts and James
Milner on the topic of ‘The Externalisation of EU Asylum Policy: The Response
of African States’.
The workshop will be held between 14:00 and 17:00 at the Pauling Centre (behind
COMPAS) at 58 Banbury Road. Full details of the workshop are in the attached
flyer. If you are interested either in attending or receiving the paper, please
let either Alexander Betts or Nick Van Hear know.
Best wishes,
Alex
**FLYER**
Workshop on:
‘The New Asylum Paradigm: views from the global south’
ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford
To be held at the Pauling Centre
58a Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6QS
November 23, 1400-1700
Until now, the debate on the ‘new’ European approaches to the externalisation
of asylum policy has taken a mainly European perspective. But since southern
states, particularly those in Africa, are being solicited by European states
as potential ‘partners’ in this project, a number of significant questions
arise about the response of the global south in the context of the so-
called ‘New Asylum Paradigm’.
To what extent is the 'new asylum paradigm' Eurocentric? What strategies have
Southern states adopted when faced with the EU's attempts to externalise
asylum policy? Why have they adopted these approaches? How have the strategies
of different states varied and why? Are Southern states ‘being cooperated
with’? What is the nature of the cooperative arrangements that are being
negotiated and implemented? How are international organisations being used as
intermediaries in this process? And, crucially, what implications does the
type of cooperation being fostered have for the global refugee regime, given
the response of the South and the processes that may be under way in Southern
states?
The workshop aims to explore these questions and also to begin to develop new
conceptual frameworks for understanding the politics of North-South, and in
particular, EU-African relations in the context of asylum, migration and
refugee policy.
The workshop will be based around a paper presented by Alexander Betts and
James Milner on ‘The Externalisation of EU Asylum Policy: The Response of
African States’. The paper will examine the nature of the European approach to
cooperation with African states in the area of asylum and refugee policy; the
response of African states and the likely implications this response has for
the principle of non-refoulement; and the structural and political factors and
constraints underlying this response from African states. It will argue that
the current European approach to ‘cooperation’ is based on narrow and short-
term interests, and that alternative forms of cooperation are possible which
can meet the interests of both North and South without undermining the basis
of the protection regime.
Comments on the paper will be offered by Laura Joyce (First Secretary for
Humanitarian Affairs, South African Permanent Mission to the United Nations)
and Anna Schmidt (University of California, Berkeley), after which the issues
will be open to general debate.
This workshop follows up a session on the New Asylum Paradigm held in June
2005, a report on which can be found at www.compas.ox.ac.uk/events/NAP_workshop.shtml
To confirm attendance at the workshop, and to receive a workshop programme
and abstract of the paper by Betts and Milner, please contact -
Alex Betts: [log in to unmask] or
Nick Van Hear: [log in to unmask]
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