A presentation by Maurice Stierl (University of Sheffield). This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
In this article, we highlight scholarly and activist insights into the interplay between migratory movements and forms of border governance in the Mediterranean Sea. In view of severe human rights violations and systematic forms of non-assistance and abandonment that have contributed to turning the sea into a liquid ‘graveyard’, we explore the complex entanglement of security and humanitarian rationales in the Mediterranean context. While the Mediterranean border has been referred to as a humanitarian border, we note that policies of containment implemented by states over the past years have resulted in the de-humanitarianisation of the border. Besides emphasising the significance of deploying a spatial lens when interrogating the Mediterranean mobility conflict, we discuss different modalities of contestation of border violence: migrant struggles and nongovernmental action at sea.
This presentation is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium's cluster on „Critical Engagements with Fundamental Rights”.
Maurice Stierl is Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Before, he taught at the University of Warwick and the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on migration and borders in contemporary Europe and (northern) Africa and is broadly situated in the fields of International Political Sociology, Political Geography, and Migration, Citizenship and Border Studies. His monograph ‘Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe’ was published by Routledge in 2019.
Note: Paper co-authored with Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details as well as a draft paper, on which the presentation is based, via e-mail prior to the event.
