Panel details

Panel organiser(s) will be presenting	In-Person & Online
Number of paper presentations	13
Location	Bergen

Abstract

In an age marked by rising nativism and xenophobia, border violence has become increasingly legitimised and normalised. Studies have documented how borders expand both inwards and outwards to further control, delimit, and brutalise the lives and bodies of refugees and other migrants. Scholarship has also highlighted the complicity of humanitarian actors in states’ migration control, containment policies, and securitisation discourses. In this panel, we aim to move beyond these important but well-established critiques to reflect on alternative forms of humanitarianism and resistance. We invite papers that explore how border violence is interpreted and resisted by civil society and local actors – including grassroots aid groups, NGOs, solidarity networks, political activists, artists, researchers, and refugee-led organisations. We ask: How do these actors understand and respond to violence, containment, cruelty, and deaths at the border? What and whom do they blame, and how do they seek to hold power-holders responsible? What strategies, practices, and discourses do they employ to challenge both the violence itself and its legitimacy or normalisation?

We particularly welcome contributions grounded in ethnographic or participatory research. We also encourage panellists to experiment with creative forms of representation and dissemination – including poetry, drawing, painting, film, and photography – and to reflect on how such modes might allow researchers to more effectively do justice to lived experiences of border violence and neglect, as well as to local expressions of care, solidarity, and resistance.

The panel is sponsored by EASA’s Anthropology of Humanitarianism Network and co-organised by the two conveners, Valentina Benincasa and Heidi Mogstad. It may lead to a special issue/multi-modal publication. While we encourage in-person participation, the panel will be hybrid to promote inclusive engagement.

Paper presentations