Dr Daniela DeBono from the Department of Anthropological Sciences delivered the keynote lecture during the international conference of the Jean Monnet network ‘Migration and Asylum Policies Systems’. This Jean Monnet network aims to create an international platform of knowledge on legal tools and best practices for stakeholders.
The Conference, held on 25 March 2022, dealt with migration and border management, and discussed challenges and perspectives for reform.
The keynote lecture, entitled ‘Of deaths, detention and dignity: emic perspectives of the EU’s Mediterranean border’, put into question the human rights credentials of the EU's migration and border management by interrogating the inconsistency of conflicting processes at the border.
In her keynote address, Dr DeBono drew on her ethnographic fieldwork in the central Mediterranean. Journeys across this route are risky, as attested by the very high death toll, making it the deadliest border crossing in the world. The well-known dangers do not deter people from embarking on this journey, in itself a clear indication of the strength of the push factors that compel them. Their hope is to find safety, freedom, opportunity, and human rights on the other side, in Europe. Instead, their journey and reception are all too often characterized by death, detention, and hostility.
This lecture presented snapshots of these journeys and daily life in migrant first reception detention centres at key nodes along the EU’s Mediterranean border. Dr DeBono put forward the argument that death could be as a cultural process linking together diverse processes, people and localities. The lecture thus took a social constructionist approach to the border, proceeding from the premise that borders are not simple geopolitical or spatial objects sustained by states, but are also produced and constructed by people.
