Race, Refuge and Repair: Rethinking Migration from the Global South

The colloquium aims to bring together the crucial empirical work currently organised under the banner of ‘border criminologies’ with critical legal analysis, including Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and related work at the intersections of refugee law, race, decolonisation and criminalisation. It seeks to advance scholarship on the imbrication of law and colonisation and the legal, political, economic and ecological relationships embedded in Empire, displacement, mobility and refugee protection. 

This is a hybrid event. You may attend the colloquium in person or online.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Tendayi Achiume in discussion with SA Human Rights Commissioner Tshepo Madlingozi 

Themes 

People are on the move. Globally 281 million people are estimated to be international migrants voluntarily moving from their place of birth (IOM, 2024) and simultaneously 108.4 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced (UNHCR, 2022). While the causes and experiences of both voluntary migration and forced displacement are complex and diverse, at their heart are issues relating to unequal state formation, enduring inequality and bordering practices. Race, Refuge & Repair aims to explore the intersection of migration and racialised border practices taking Tendayi Achiume’s work on decolonial migration as its intellectual entry point to address the central question of what is owed, by whom, to Global South citizens on the move? This colloquium encourages the submission of papers that draw on insights from law, criminology, history, critical race and ethnic studies, refugee studies, and anthropology to explore and offer a new understanding of the relationships between, and the co-constitution of, colonial and postcolonial governance, international law, migration, and refugee protection. In her ground-breaking work on migration as decolonisation, Achiume proposes that former colonial and current imperial powers are obliged to open their borders to their former colonial subjects to redress past and on-going relations of domination and subordination. Using this insight as the starting point for our discussion, we would welcome submissions of papers that explore five distinct lines of enquiry:

• How did colonialism and de-colonisation shape the development of international law and the protection of refugees?
• How might we unpick the historical specificities of the colonial and neo-colonial economic, political and cultural ties that inform current-day migration?
• What does close attention to how asylum, criminalisation, and racialisation are configured and deployed at the border illuminate about current legal conceptions of the obligations owed to Global South citizens?
• How do we think about South-South migration and refugee practices in a globally stratified refugee protection system? How do we conceptualise reparation and decolonial repair in the context of global mobility?

Speakers include Prof Siphamandla Zondi, (University of Johannesburg), Prof Mary Bosworth (University of Oxford), Prof Noura Erakat (Rutgters-New Brunswick), Prof Fatima Khan (UCT), Prof Jonathan Klaaren (WITS University), Dr Nomfundo Ramalekana (UCT), A/Prof John Reynolds (Maynooth University), Commissioner Tshepo Madlingozi, A/Prof Chris Gevers (WITS University), A/Prof Catherine Briddick (University of Oxford), Dr Nicola Palmer (University of Cape Town) and Dr Uttara Shahani (University of Oxford).

Organising Committee 

Dr Nicola Palmer, Dr Lufuno Sadiki, Prof Fatima Khan, Dr Catherine Briddick, Dr Nomfundo Ramalekana, Dr Uttara Shahani, Dr Alpa Parmar and Ms Joanna Rahmatoulay Bakilana.

The colloquium will be co-hosted by the Centre for Criminology and the Refugee Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town, the Refugee Studies Centre (ODID) and Border Criminologies in the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford alongside the Centre for International Governance and Dispute Resolution at King’s College London

Please register here for the event.