Encontros sobre Experiências Migratórias
The experiential border: Where (what and who) are borders?
12 maio, 14h30 > 16h30
Sala B226, Edifício 4, Iscte
Abstract:
Although it is typical to think about borders as lines drawn on maps, facts or edges of space, this ethnographic research on Malta’s regime of borders reveals several ways in which this simplification of borders requires critical engagement.
In this presentation, Lisa aims to problematize that simplification; she relies on the experiences of a diverse group of border-crossers who migrated to Malta and whom she met there between 2021 and 2023. She will build the case that border-crossers share some surprising commonalities despite the circumstances of their migrations – and that it is those circumstances, more than the act of migrating, that defines “who is a migrant” in the EUropean context.
Lisa will conclude there is always a cost to crossing borders; in doing so, reveal the differentials of those costs – inequalities that are purposefully crafted. She concludes borders have transformative and affective consequences which relate with the physicality of borders but materialize the metaphysical impact (often obscured) borders have, too. Borders order and structure physical and social life; they influence, control and regulate mobility. They divide physically, institutionally, conceptually and emotionally. Finally, Lisa will conclude that although it is common to refer to “the border” as a singular entity, borders are multiple. And this multiplicity operates according to imperial logics that have historical precedents. Lisa's hope is you will leave this presentation being more aware and critical of borders in your everyday life – and in our collective life.
Speaker:
Lisa Ann Senecal is a PhD Candidate (Migrations, Anthropology) at ICS-ULisboa. Her research centers around the intersection of race, class, and migratory spaces. Her research focuses on antiracism, inequality, noncitizenship, representations, cultural transformation, and mobility justice as these concepts intersect within a regime of borders and/or in border spaces. By centering the Mediterranean/European/North-South continuum, her project aims to map the Maltese border by teasing apart structural aspects of the border from its embodied aspects with an emphasis on noncitizen subjectivities – that is the actual experience of borders.
A little about her thesis:
Titled Mapping Malta: A Study of the Regime of Borders Through Structures and Noncitizen Subjectivities, her thesis aims to disentangle constructed aspects of the regime of borders in Malta from those which are experienced by the noncitizens who engage them. Using border ethnography as a tool to define both physical and conceptual spaces of engagement, it addresses the construction and enforcement of border structures and how they are experienced and negotiated to fully understand their function, purpose, and consequences. This novel approach aims to illustrate how border regimes (re)produce hierarchies of value that have direct consequences on the trajectories and opportunities of the noncitizens who traverse borders. Through the experiences of a diverse group of noncitizens, it reveals how power works in context and how hierarchies are (re)constructed and (re)produced.
Keywords: ethnography, regime of borders, Malta, human circulations, mobility justice
Discussant:
Nina Amelung is a sociologist and research fellow at the Institute of Social Science (ICS), Universidade de Lisboa. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Political Sociology, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Critical Migration Studies. She explores relations between emergent publics, matters of citizenship and digital and biometric technologies applied in migration and crime control regimes. She is co-chair of the Thematic Section on Knowledge, Science and Technology of the Portuguese Sociological Association (Associação Portuguesa de Sociologia – APS), the independent research network STS-MIGTEC and in the leadership team of the Cost Action DATAMIG.
