Call for Papers: Fences, Networks, People

Exploring the EU/AFRICA borderland
Pavia, Faculty of Political Sciences, 15-17 December 2011
Background
Over the last decade, growing scholarly and public attention has been 
attracted by the externalizing of Southern European borders into the 
African continent and by the increasingly restrictive migration policies 
of European nation-states. As a matter of fact, Europe has made (and is 
making) enormous investments in high-technology devices (satellites, 
surveillance systems, biometric data-bases) to secure its territory 
against what it sees as “waves” of migrants coming from and through 
Africa in search of political asylum or economic and educational 
opportunities. Efforts have been directed also at monitoring their 
movements once they reach the European Union while, regularly, media and 
political discourses have reacted to African political, economic and 
environmental crisis by warning against the risks of invasion from the 
other side of the Mediterranean Sea. Following old colonial ties, some 
member states and African governments have stipulated bilateral 
agreements meant to control migration and facilitate the repatriation of 
undocumented migrants and rejected asylum-seekers (e.g. Italy and Libya, 
France and Mali, Spain and Morocco).

A new de facto EU/AFRICA borderland is under establishment in Northern 
and Western Africa through the multiplication of physical border spaces 
(for instance the razor wire fences guarding off Ceuta and Melilla or 
migrant detention centres in the Sahara) and of border practices (navy 
patrols between the Canary Island and the West African coast, 
repatriation agreements, development programs targeted to keep Africans 
in Africa, and media campaigns against ‘illegal’ migration in sending 
countries). The impact of such transformations on the ground has only 
started to be detailed together with their effects on local 
socio-political contexts.
  It has been argued, for example, that sovereignty is today measured 
against the state’s capacity to control flows of people across its 
territory. Yet, this point calls for some further theoretical 
consideration, as emergent border regimes are also affected by migrants’ 
experiences and creative reactions to changing circumstances. The 
different and often conflictive participation of state and non-state 
actors – like international organizations, NGOs, human rights activists, 
security companies, intermediaries of migrants’ travels across the 
Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea - in the management of human mobility 
is another topic worth discussing. Finally, there remains the 
challenging task to compare the EU/AFRICA borderland with similar (or 
dissimilar) processes of border securitization in other parts of the 
African continent, starting with South Africa.

This workshop aims to create a dialogue between specialists of African 
and European border studies. Such an encounter should be fruitful for a 
number of reasons. African border studies emphasize the (socially and 
politically) constructed nature of national territorial borders, and 
envisage the modes by which these are moulded through daily (social, 
cultural, economic, political) interactions. These studies also 
explicitly build on a rich geographical and historical comparative 
perspective, which opens up interesting thematic debates. The way in 
which African migrants themselves are interiorizing and reshaping 
European policies of border externalisation is one of the issues to 
address. Changing border laws often contribute to diverse and 
multi-local socio-economic interactions, and also considerably influence 
the experiences of migrants. The latter, in turn, continue to draw their 
daily construction of the EU/AFRICA borderland on long histories of 
intercontinental contact and cultural exchange. Papers that cast light 
on the interaction between border legislations, surveillance 
technologies and migrant experiences by in-depth ethnographic and 
historical analysis, as well as contributions exploring the lasting 
impact of such processes on the construction of African and European 
ideas of nationhood, territory and mobile identities, are highly welcome.

Organization
The workshop will be hosted by the Faculty of Political Sciences of 
Pavia University. It is co-organized by the University of Milan-Bicocca 
(‘Riccardo Massa’, Department of Human Sciences for Education), Zurich 
University (Department of Geography) and the University of Pavia 
(Faculty of Political Sciences; Department of Political and Social 
Studies; Centro Studi per i Popoli Extrauropei ‘Cesare Bonacossa’) with 
the financial contribution of the European Science Foundation and the 
intellectual support of the ABORNE.

ABORNE (http://www.aborne.org/) is an interdisciplinary network of 
researchers interested in all aspects of international borders and 
trans-boundary phenomena in Africa. Its emphasis is largely on 
borderlands as physical spaces and social spheres, but the network is 
also concerned with regional flows of people and goods as well as 
economic and social processes that may be located at some distance from 
the geographical border.

Those who wish to participate should send an abstracts of 500 words to 
Timothy Raeymaekers ([log in to unmask]) and Alice 
Bellagamba ([log in to unmask]) together with a short curriculum 
vitae by 30 April 2011. In accordance with the rules set by the European 
Science Foundation, speakers based in countries financing the networking 
program will be given preference in funding. These are Austria, Denmark, 
Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and the 
United Kingdom. Additional funding is available for a limited number of 
participants from other European as well as African countries.

Since this is a closed workshop, all candidates will be selected on the 
basis of their abstracts and past credentials. The scientific committee 
will communicate its decision by 30 June 2011. Participants are required 
to contribute a paper of no more than 8.000 words (references included) 
by 30 October 2011.

Papers will be circulated before the workshop. A collection of essays to 
be published by Palgrave Macmillan in the ABORNE book series or by 
another publisher able to guarantee high quality and peer-review is planned.

Organizers
  * Alice Bellagamba (University of Milan-Bicocca)
  * Timothy Raeymaekers (University of Zurich)
  * Pierluigi Valsecchi (University of Pavia)
  * Scientific Committee
  * Alice Bellagamba (University of Milan-Bicocca)
  * Timothy Raeymaekers (University of Zurich)
  * Pierluigi Valsecchi (University of Pavia)
  * Chiara Brambilla (University of Bergamo)
  * Tara Polzer (University of Witwatersrand)
  * Henk Van Houtum (Nijmegen Centre for Border Research, Radboud 
University of Nijmegen)
  * Wolfgang Zeller (University of Edinburgh)

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