Panel details

Panel organiser(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online
Number of paper presentations	9

Abstract

Across Europe, people on the move are continuously met by a heavy-handed state response, which in addition to physical violence, detention and removals oftentimes takes the shape of more insidious and subtle forms of violence. Such ‘regimes of practices’ (Jaspars, 2020) can be understood as a strategic approach, or ‘politics of exhaustion’ (Ansems de Vries and Welander, 2016; Ansems de Vries and Welander, 2021; Welander, 2020), designed to hamper people’s access to safety by eroding their resolve to carry on and influencing their journeys and decisions. During the Covid-19 pandemic, these practices have evolved into new forms of everyday aggressions across Europe’s borderlands and host countries (Jaspars, 2021). Solidarity and resistance to these aggressions have long been a response by citizens, grassroots groups, established charities and refugees themselves. The pandemic and measures to contain it will have led not only to new constraints and state repression, but also new ways of resisting and overcoming them.

This panel invites papers which address one or more of these dynamics in any European context, welcoming submission from academics at all stages of their career, activist and grassroots groups, and practitioners alike. In particular, submission from individuals with lived experience are encouraged and supported.

TRIGGER WARNING: Please note that the content of some of the papers in this panel may trigger an emotional response for individuals who may have experienced or witnessed self-harm, violence and/or other traumatic events

References:
Jaspars, S., Buchanan Smith, M. and Abdul-Jalil, M. (2020) 'Darfuri Journeys to Europe: Causes, Risks and Humanitarian Abandonment', International Migration, https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12723

Ansems De Vries, L. and Welander, M. (2016) 'Refugees, displacement, and the European ‘politics of exhaustion’', available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/mediterranean-journeys-in-hope/leonie-ansems-de-vries-marta-welander/refugees-displacement-and-europ/

De Vries, A. and Welander, M. (2021) 'Politics of Exhaustion: Reflecting on an Emerging Concept in the Study of Human Mobility and Control', available at https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2021/01/politics

Welander, M. (2020) 'The Politics of Exhaustion and the Externalization of British Border Control. An Articulation of a Strategy Designed to Deter, Control and Exclude', International Migration, doi: 10.1111/imig.12778

Jaspars, S. (2021) 'The Everyday Cruelties of the UK Asylum System', available at https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2021/06/everyday

Paper presentations