Events / Program: Europe-Asia Research Platform on Forced Migration

	Title Sort ascending	Date	Type	Speakers	Register
	“We Are All Refugees”: Informal Settlements and Camps as Converging Spaces of Global Displacements	Wed, 17.03.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarFaranak Miraftab		“We Are All Refugees”: Informal Settlements and Camps as Converging Spaces of Global Displacements Wed, 17.03.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarFaranak Miraftab Series: Seminars and Colloquia Faranak Miraftab presented her most recent work in which she relationally theorizes realities of those living in slums and in camps in the era of intensified global displacements. Read more
“We Are All Refugees”: Informal Settlements and Camps as Converging Spaces of Global Displacements Wed, 17.03.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarFaranak Miraftab Series: Seminars and Colloquia Faranak Miraftab presented her most recent work in which she relationally theorizes realities of those living in slums and in camps in the era of intensified global displacements. Read more
	“Arrival” Infrastructures of the Displaced from Ukraine in Vienna	Thu, 09.02.2023	Panels and Discussions	Ayşe ÇağlarDavid Himler-Preukschat, Nina Andresen, Tanja Maier, Nataliia Kolchanova, Saskia Schwaiger		“Arrival” Infrastructures of the Displaced from Ukraine in Vienna Thu, 09.02.2023 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarDavid Himler-Preukschat, Nina Andresen, Tanja Maier, Nataliia Kolchanova, Saskia Schwaiger Series: Panels and Discussions Reviewing the outcomes of the research, the IWM organized a panel discussion with different stakeholders from the city, NGOs, civil initiatives, and people from Ukraine to present key findings and discuss the most salient questions about ‘arrival infrastructures’ in Vienna. Read more
“Arrival” Infrastructures of the Displaced from Ukraine in Vienna Thu, 09.02.2023 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarDavid Himler-Preukschat, Nina Andresen, Tanja Maier, Nataliia Kolchanova, Saskia Schwaiger Series: Panels and Discussions Reviewing the outcomes of the research, the IWM organized a panel discussion with different stakeholders from the city, NGOs, civil initiatives, and people from Ukraine to present key findings and discuss the most salient questions about ‘arrival infrastructures’ in Vienna. Read more
	Ukrainian War, Refugees, and Human Rights in a Global Context	Wed, 06.07.2022	Panels and Discussions	Giorgia Donà Ranabir Samaddar Randall Hansen Ayşe ÇağlarAlex Aleinikoff, Grażyna Baranowska, Olena Fedyuk		Ukrainian War, Refugees, and Human Rights in a Global Context Wed, 06.07.2022 Speakers: Giorgia Donà Ranabir Samaddar Randall Hansen Ayşe ÇağlarAlex Aleinikoff, Grażyna Baranowska, Olena Fedyuk Series: Panels and Discussions The Ukrainian war unleashed unprecedented displacements in Europe, unseen since WWII. Most of the borders in Europe and throughout the world were opened to Ukrainians - in contrast to the restrictive border regimes many recent refugee movements to Europe, such as the Syrian or Afghani refugees fleeing war, were subject to. A series of schemes were developed to welcome Ukrainian refugees and emplace them into the labor markets and educational systems of their host countries. Instead of approaching the current Ukrainian refugee movement as unique and singular, this panel aimed to situate its dynamics within a broader context of refugee movements in Europe and beyond. It further placed it in conversation with the historical, political, and social contexts that cause such movements in the first place and seeks to explore it in relation to and together with other refugee movements globally. Read more
Ukrainian War, Refugees, and Human Rights in a Global Context Wed, 06.07.2022 Speakers: Giorgia Donà Ranabir Samaddar Randall Hansen Ayşe ÇağlarAlex Aleinikoff, Grażyna Baranowska, Olena Fedyuk Series: Panels and Discussions The Ukrainian war unleashed unprecedented displacements in Europe, unseen since WWII. Most of the borders in Europe and throughout the world were opened to Ukrainians - in contrast to the restrictive border regimes many recent refugee movements to Europe, such as the Syrian or Afghani refugees fleeing war, were subject to. A series of schemes were developed to welcome Ukrainian refugees and emplace them into the labor markets and educational systems of their host countries. Instead of approaching the current Ukrainian refugee movement as unique and singular, this panel aimed to situate its dynamics within a broader context of refugee movements in Europe and beyond. It further placed it in conversation with the historical, political, and social contexts that cause such movements in the first place and seeks to explore it in relation to and together with other refugee movements globally. Read more
	The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked	Wed, 20.04.2022	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman		The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked Wed, 20.04.2022 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman Series: Seminars and Colloquia The “migrant” – as the figure outside the polity – stands at the intersection of two global struggles: that of decolonization and that against fascism. An emancipatory politics for all involved will remain elusive until 1) the link between these two struggles is clarified; and 2) those structurally aligned with the category of “white citizen” realize that they, too, are impoverished by the dehumanization of the Other. This paper firstly explains how fascism is baked into modern sovereign power beginning with Hobbes’s Leviathan and fully expressed in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. By fascism, I mean the inclination of an atomized and insecure national-cum-racial majority to form homogenous mass movements that regard the state with suspicion and that targets all others as existential threats. The paper secondly argues that this sovereign arrangement also diminishes the “white citizen” in the majority because that person must sacrifice their own perspective to find safety in conformity, but at the expense of becoming monstrous versions of themselves as they support a politics of oppression. Dismantling fascism’s enabling logic corresponds to decolonization as both struggles necessarily question the basis of modern politics: the atomized individual. The paper, then, draws on Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin who, each in their own way, outline an alternative (and more realistic) political subject that is both inherently related to others and utterly unique in its own worldly perspective. However fleetingly, this subject is poised for an alternative sovereign action premised upon the fact of human plurality rather than myth of national-cum-racial homogeneity. Read more
The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked Wed, 20.04.2022 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman Series: Seminars and Colloquia The “migrant” – as the figure outside the polity – stands at the intersection of two global struggles: that of decolonization and that against fascism. An emancipatory politics for all involved will remain elusive until 1) the link between these two struggles is clarified; and 2) those structurally aligned with the category of “white citizen” realize that they, too, are impoverished by the dehumanization of the Other. This paper firstly explains how fascism is baked into modern sovereign power beginning with Hobbes’s Leviathan and fully expressed in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. By fascism, I mean the inclination of an atomized and insecure national-cum-racial majority to form homogenous mass movements that regard the state with suspicion and that targets all others as existential threats. The paper secondly argues that this sovereign arrangement also diminishes the “white citizen” in the majority because that person must sacrifice their own perspective to find safety in conformity, but at the expense of becoming monstrous versions of themselves as they support a politics of oppression. Dismantling fascism’s enabling logic corresponds to decolonization as both struggles necessarily question the basis of modern politics: the atomized individual. The paper, then, draws on Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin who, each in their own way, outline an alternative (and more realistic) political subject that is both inherently related to others and utterly unique in its own worldly perspective. However fleetingly, this subject is poised for an alternative sovereign action premised upon the fact of human plurality rather than myth of national-cum-racial homogeneity. Read more
	The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Temporary Protection and the Turkey/EU Deal	Tue, 30.11.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarFeyzi Baban	Register here	The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Temporary Protection and the Turkey/EU Deal Tue, 30.11.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarFeyzi Baban Series: Seminars and Colloquia Turkey currently hosts over 4million Syrian refugees who have no prospects of gaining long-term legal status. Their precarious lives are further complicated with the EU’s ongoing collaboration with Turkey to prevent them from claiming refugee status in the EU member states. The EU’s externalization efforts through its cooperation with Turkey further contribute to the precarious lives of Syrians and enable European states to ignore their international obligation to protect Syrians. In my talk, I will discuss elements of “architecture of precarity,” which defines the living conditions of Syrians and their legal prospects for status as a series of structurally conditioned obstacles. Domestic and international, these obstacles are designed to prevent Syrian refugees from claiming legal protection and attaining long-term legal status, including citizenship. While this “architecture of precarity” is most visible in Turkey’s treatment of Syrians, its legal elements such as externalization and ambiguous legal status are increasingly used by many states worldwide to circumvent the international legal framework of refugee protection. Read more
The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Temporary Protection and the Turkey/EU Deal Tue, 30.11.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarFeyzi Baban Series: Seminars and Colloquia Turkey currently hosts over 4million Syrian refugees who have no prospects of gaining long-term legal status. Their precarious lives are further complicated with the EU’s ongoing collaboration with Turkey to prevent them from claiming refugee status in the EU member states. The EU’s externalization efforts through its cooperation with Turkey further contribute to the precarious lives of Syrians and enable European states to ignore their international obligation to protect Syrians. In my talk, I will discuss elements of “architecture of precarity,” which defines the living conditions of Syrians and their legal prospects for status as a series of structurally conditioned obstacles. Domestic and international, these obstacles are designed to prevent Syrian refugees from claiming legal protection and attaining long-term legal status, including citizenship. While this “architecture of precarity” is most visible in Turkey’s treatment of Syrians, its legal elements such as externalization and ambiguous legal status are increasingly used by many states worldwide to circumvent the international legal framework of refugee protection. Read more
	The Post-Coloniality of Asylum Infrastructure	Mon, 13.12.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarPaolo Novak		The Post-Coloniality of Asylum Infrastructure Mon, 13.12.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarPaolo Novak Series: Seminars and Colloquia This presentation takes as its object of analysis and investigation asylum seekers’ reception centres in a central Italian province. It builds upon literature concerned with the logistification of asylum to conceive these centres as nodes of the EU humanitarian border, yet it moves beyond the exclusive concern with the migrant-border dialectic that characterises most literature on the subject. In its attempt to dig deeper into the social ontology of the humanitarian border, the presentation de-centres the logistical gaze cast on asylum management characterising this literature by foregrounding instead the productive relation between the humanitarian border and the place-specific social dynamics that explain its emergence and reproduction in concrete settings. Accounting for the multiple and variegated histories, stories, agencies and trajectories that become entangled in the rooms of these reception centres, the paper argues that critical border scholars need to move beyond an exclusive concern with the border-migrant dialectic, and to reorient our attention towards an appreciation of borders’ place-specific configurations. In bringing to the fore the unevenness of these entanglements in each of these reception centres, the presentation also suggests recalibrating contemporary concerns with the coloniality of asylum, of migration, and of infrastructure. The expression ‘postcoloniality of asylum infrastructure’ wants to entangle colonial world-making legacies with everyday practices of place-making. Read more
The Post-Coloniality of Asylum Infrastructure Mon, 13.12.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarPaolo Novak Series: Seminars and Colloquia This presentation takes as its object of analysis and investigation asylum seekers’ reception centres in a central Italian province. It builds upon literature concerned with the logistification of asylum to conceive these centres as nodes of the EU humanitarian border, yet it moves beyond the exclusive concern with the migrant-border dialectic that characterises most literature on the subject. In its attempt to dig deeper into the social ontology of the humanitarian border, the presentation de-centres the logistical gaze cast on asylum management characterising this literature by foregrounding instead the productive relation between the humanitarian border and the place-specific social dynamics that explain its emergence and reproduction in concrete settings. Accounting for the multiple and variegated histories, stories, agencies and trajectories that become entangled in the rooms of these reception centres, the paper argues that critical border scholars need to move beyond an exclusive concern with the border-migrant dialectic, and to reorient our attention towards an appreciation of borders’ place-specific configurations. In bringing to the fore the unevenness of these entanglements in each of these reception centres, the presentation also suggests recalibrating contemporary concerns with the coloniality of asylum, of migration, and of infrastructure. The expression ‘postcoloniality of asylum infrastructure’ wants to entangle colonial world-making legacies with everyday practices of place-making. Read more
	The Intersections of Syrian Refugees’ Dilemma: Settlement, Onward Movement, and Return	Wed, 16.06.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarAhmet İçduygu		The Intersections of Syrian Refugees’ Dilemma: Settlement, Onward Movement, and Return Wed, 16.06.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarAhmet İçduygu Series: Seminars and Colloquia The international refugee regime and its national versions increasingly tend to offer a temporary protection mechanism that creates a “limboizing effect” on refugees’ lives. It also appears that these policies use temporariness as a political tool of governance. While these dominant international and national rulings ideally present the three choices of settlement (integration in the first country of asylum), onward movement (resettlement in the third country), and return (repatriation) as durable solutions to the refugee question, none of these choices easily become pertinent in the lives of refugees under their protracted situation and limitations of the international refugee regime. Consequently, refugees face with the challenges of living in an environment of uncertainties that is also labelled with the concept of permanent temporariness. In this presentation, Ahmet Içduygu referred to the concept of permanent temporariness, and answered the question of what is the role of international refugee regime and that of Turkey’s refugee policies towards Syrian refugees in the context of refugees’ aspirations for planning their future. He also questioned the polarized nature of the structure-agency debate, emphasizing the synthesis of these two influences on refugees’ aspirations in the context of settlement, onward movement and return choices. Read more
The Intersections of Syrian Refugees’ Dilemma: Settlement, Onward Movement, and Return Wed, 16.06.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarAhmet İçduygu Series: Seminars and Colloquia The international refugee regime and its national versions increasingly tend to offer a temporary protection mechanism that creates a “limboizing effect” on refugees’ lives. It also appears that these policies use temporariness as a political tool of governance. While these dominant international and national rulings ideally present the three choices of settlement (integration in the first country of asylum), onward movement (resettlement in the third country), and return (repatriation) as durable solutions to the refugee question, none of these choices easily become pertinent in the lives of refugees under their protracted situation and limitations of the international refugee regime. Consequently, refugees face with the challenges of living in an environment of uncertainties that is also labelled with the concept of permanent temporariness. In this presentation, Ahmet Içduygu referred to the concept of permanent temporariness, and answered the question of what is the role of international refugee regime and that of Turkey’s refugee policies towards Syrian refugees in the context of refugees’ aspirations for planning their future. He also questioned the polarized nature of the structure-agency debate, emphasizing the synthesis of these two influences on refugees’ aspirations in the context of settlement, onward movement and return choices. Read more
	The Impossibility of Politics: Brecht, Manto and Two Itinerant Situations	Tue, 19.10.2021	Lecture	Ludger Hagedorn Ranabir Samaddar		The Impossibility of Politics: Brecht, Manto and Two Itinerant Situations Tue, 19.10.2021 Speakers: Ludger Hagedorn Ranabir Samaddar Series: Lecture Two writings of Bertold Brecht and Sadat Hasan Manto are joined by a realisation that in certain situations political openings become impossible. Strangely these are not stable or more correctly speaking static situations but are situations of mobility. Yet the conditions of mobility bring to us only spectres of deaths. Political openings towards transformation at least in a conventional sense are ruled out. The severity of itinerant situations at times makes it impossible for the migrant subjectivity to become political. Read more
The Impossibility of Politics: Brecht, Manto and Two Itinerant Situations Tue, 19.10.2021 Speakers: Ludger Hagedorn Ranabir Samaddar Series: Lecture Two writings of Bertold Brecht and Sadat Hasan Manto are joined by a realisation that in certain situations political openings become impossible. Strangely these are not stable or more correctly speaking static situations but are situations of mobility. Yet the conditions of mobility bring to us only spectres of deaths. Political openings towards transformation at least in a conventional sense are ruled out. The severity of itinerant situations at times makes it impossible for the migrant subjectivity to become political. Read more
	The Conundrum of Trafficking and Statelessness in West Bengal	Mon, 28.02.2022	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe Çağlar Paula Banerjee		The Conundrum of Trafficking and Statelessness in West Bengal Mon, 28.02.2022 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Paula Banerjee Series: Seminars and Colloquia Statelessness is a problem that has been plaguing states, human rights activists, the UNHCR and other international organizations and the vulnerable and displaced population groups of the world. Statelessness does not respect borders; it robs the stateless of their rights and dignity, rights over their bodies and dignity of life. It deprives them of the ability to protest rampant exploitations. It also robs the states of its human face. Stateless men, women and children become insecure because they can be displaced any time that the state or the majority community so desires. Even states are unable to fathom what to do with stateless people, where to return them if need be. The Rohingya women in Bengal jails are a case in point. Read more
The Conundrum of Trafficking and Statelessness in West Bengal Mon, 28.02.2022 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Paula Banerjee Series: Seminars and Colloquia Statelessness is a problem that has been plaguing states, human rights activists, the UNHCR and other international organizations and the vulnerable and displaced population groups of the world. Statelessness does not respect borders; it robs the stateless of their rights and dignity, rights over their bodies and dignity of life. It deprives them of the ability to protest rampant exploitations. It also robs the states of its human face. Stateless men, women and children become insecure because they can be displaced any time that the state or the majority community so desires. Even states are unable to fathom what to do with stateless people, where to return them if need be. The Rohingya women in Bengal jails are a case in point. Read more
	The Coloniality of Migration	Wed, 20.01.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarPrem Kumar Rajaram		The Coloniality of Migration Wed, 20.01.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarPrem Kumar Rajaram Series: Seminars and Colloquia Refugees and migrants are often studied as though they have no relation to the racial and class structures and histories of the societies in which they reside. They are taken to be external strangers to be governed by ‘integration’ policy and border management. Migration, and in particular forced migration, can be usefully understood in relation to practices of material and cultural dispossession and value expropriation so as to ensure a steady supply of cheapened labour power. These practices were central to the way colonial capitalism of the 19th and 20th centuries was organised, and remain pertinent to contemporary intersections of politics, economics and culture. The persistent coloniality of contemporary migration is evident in struggles to control and direct the social reproduction of culturally-demeaned others (including migrants and other racialised groups) with the aim of ensuring the regular supply of cheapened labour. Read more
The Coloniality of Migration Wed, 20.01.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarPrem Kumar Rajaram Series: Seminars and Colloquia Refugees and migrants are often studied as though they have no relation to the racial and class structures and histories of the societies in which they reside. They are taken to be external strangers to be governed by ‘integration’ policy and border management. Migration, and in particular forced migration, can be usefully understood in relation to practices of material and cultural dispossession and value expropriation so as to ensure a steady supply of cheapened labour power. These practices were central to the way colonial capitalism of the 19th and 20th centuries was organised, and remain pertinent to contemporary intersections of politics, economics and culture. The persistent coloniality of contemporary migration is evident in struggles to control and direct the social reproduction of culturally-demeaned others (including migrants and other racialised groups) with the aim of ensuring the regular supply of cheapened labour. Read more