Stuck at the Gates: Seminar on Migration, Biotechnologies and Limits of Regulation #EASA2014

Once you arrive in Tallinn for the EASA, you are already almost in Helsinki – so why not hop on a ferry and make the journey all the way! On August 4th Allegra Lab organises a small scale ‘Spill Over’ for the EASA in collaboration with the Finnish Anthropological Society, Research Project ‘Bodies of Evidence’ (Kone Fund)) and with support from the Department of Social Anthropology of the University of Helsinki (et al). The event centres around the international regulatory framework on migration, thus continuing also our thread on Borders, and features Ghassan Hage, Sarah Green, Heath Cabot, Husein Muhammed and Allegra’s very own Judith Beyer – with your humble Allegra moderators Miia Halme-Tuomisaari and Julie Billaud (wo)manning the floor.

Join us thus for some more Anthro Fun – and as you remember from our coverage from Knots, the mad Finns sure know how to enjoy themselves in all conditions (although please note: weather forecast predicts very little snow in August)! Email us at things(at)allegralaboratory.net if you want to register – we look forward to seeing you!

Stuck at the Gates:  Seminar on Migration, Biotechnologies and Limits of Regulation

4.8.2014, 2- 5pm, Room 505, Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6, Helsinki, Finland

‘Spill Over’ of the Bi-Annual Meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropology organized in Tallinn 31 July- 3 August, 2014; organized by Allegra Lab Association in collaboration with the Research Project ‘Bodies of Evidence’ (Koneen Säätiö), University of Eastern Finland, The Finnish Anthropological Society, and supported by the Department of Anthropology, University of Helsinki

The global regulatory framework around migration is structured around frontiers and gates, both concrete and figurative. For the privileged groups they are irrelevant and to be crossed on a whim. For the underprivileged majority they become arbitrators of life and death, resulting in intense sentiments of ‘stuckedness’ in the words of Ghassan Hage, precariousness and exclusion.

In this seminar these themes are discussed by focusing on the rationales and concrete means of governing migration. Key topics of the seminar are the paradox of urgency in the experiences of asylum seekers, and the ideals of detachment, predictability and predetermined aesthetics characterizing bureaucratic and judicial processes. Furthermore, it explores technologies of ‘truth production’ (e.g. fingerprint and iris scan databases, bone x-rays scans, and DNA analysis),which impose themselves on the very flesh and blood of the involved individuals.

What is actually going on? What is being measured and regulated, how and why? What is the nature of the knowledge regimes that justify such interventions and the differential treatment in between groups of people? What kind of realities – or fantasies – are being upheld, what kind of dystopias are suppressed or destroyed as distinct groups are (attempted to be) included or excluded? What happens to notions of citizenship in the process – as well as humanity? How is justice included in this equation: how to approach a regulatory system built on a structurally unjust world order where migrants frequently becomecriminalized by the very regulation they are subjected to? And most importantly, what are the effects of all the above on the lives of those who are subjected to these techniques?

Speakers

Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne

Sarah Green, University of Helsinki

Heath Cabot, College of the Atlantic

Anna-Maria Tapaninen, University of East Finland

Judith Beyer, University of Halle-Wittenberg

Husein Mohammed, Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment

Panel Discussion

Chair: Miia Halme-Tuomisaari

Remember our EASA coverage, previous posts here and here!