Category: Documents-en

Border security as Practice

Special issue of Security Dialogue about securing the border. Edited by Karine Côté-Boucher, Federica Infantino and Mark B. Salter

Abstract:

The ambition of this special issue is to contribute to contemporary scholarly analyses of border security by bringing more focus onto a specific field of inquiry: the practices of the plurality of power-brokers involved in the securing of borders. Border security is addressed from the angle of the everyday practices of those who are appointed to carry it out; considering border security as practice is essential for shedding light on contemporary problematizations of security. Underscoring the methodological specificity of fieldwork research, we call for a better grounding of scholarship within the specific agencies intervening in bordering spaces in order to provide detailed analyses of the contextualized practices of security actors.

Informations to access the publication on SAGE Journal website

Frederica Infantino et Andrea Rea : publications

Infantino, Federica. Bordering «fake» marriages? The everyday practices of control at the consulates of Belgium, France and Italy in Casablanca. Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa, 2014, vol. 7, no 1, p. 27-48.

Infantino, Federica et REA, Andrea. La mobilisation d’un savoir pratique local: attribution des visas Schengen au Consulat général de Belgique à Casablanca. Sociologies pratiques, 2012, no 1, p. 67-78.

See the presentations of Frederica Infantino and Andrea Rea at the international conference colloque

ABS World Conference – Post Cold-war borders: global trends and regional responses

From 9 to 13 june 2014, the first ever ABS (Association for Borderlands Studies) World Conference in Joensuu (Finland) and St. Petersburg (Russia) will be the first truly global forum for a global gathering of border scholars.

Theme of the conference

The issue of borders, their functions and changing significance and symbolism presently looms larger than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The commonplace of global de-bordering, supported by optimistic notions of globalization and a new post-Cold War world order, has arguably succumbed to the reality of increasing complexity and instability in the world system. We can recognize global megatrends that are changing the nature of borders while, at the same time, there are obviously different regional responses to these trends.

All the informations on ABS website

See the program here

Mediterranean Migrations : round table in Rome

Table ronde
Rome, 26-27 mai 2014
École française de Rome
Piazza Navona, 62
00186 Roma

Cette table ronde propose un éclairage sur les dynamiques migratoires actuelles en Méditerranée :
– à la lumière des débats récents qui traversent les études migratoires, croisant une attention croissante pour le caractère polymorphe des pratiques de mobilité et la nécessité d’une approche multi-niveau des politiques publiques.
– au regard des changements sociaux, économiques et politiques qui ont affecté l’espace euro-méditerranéen durant les cinq dernières années (crises économiques sud-européennes et montée des xénophobies, printemps arabes, guerres civiles), qui ne doivent pas éclipser d’éventuelles continuités (quid des politiques de coopération avec les pays tiers ? Des mobilités de touristes et de retraités ? Des pratiques transnationales des migrants ?).

Cette table-ronde mènera une interrogation sur la pertinence du changement comme grille de lecture, en identifiant les éléments de continuité et de rupture, dans un contexte marqué par de multiples crises. Nous nous interrogerons sur l’évolution des formes migratoires et de leurs directions, les changements institutionnels et sociaux qui les guident, les effets de frontières, les appartenances transnationales, en nous appuyant sur les contributions de chercheurs de différentes disciplines (science politique, sociologie, géographie, anthropologie).

Voir le programme (PDF) sur le site de l’EFR

Borders, Mobilities and Migrations, Perspectives from the Mediterranean, 19-21st Century

With : Aboyante-Yemini, Lisa / Baby-Collin, Virginie / Mazzella, Sylvie / Mourlane, Stéphane / Parizot, Cédric / Regnard, Céline / Sintès, Pierre (eds.)

Collection: Regional Integration and Social Cohesion – volume 13

This book explores changes in the social, economic and political processes underpinning the mechanisms for the management of human mobility and cohabitation in the Mediterranean region, while suggesting comparisons with the situation in the Americas.

It considers the public policies that introduce such mechanisms at state, region or city level, and also explores the way that populations adapt to, breach or find ways of working around these systems.

The volume also attempts to evaluate the extent to which the reactions of the populations concerned can influence such systems. Relying on a historical perspective and covering a broad period of time from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, this book questions the increasing influence of processes born out of globalization upon present readjustments of mobility and territorial configurations.

All informations on Peter Lang Editions website

Borderizing the island: on the Borderization of Lampedusa

‘Borderizing’ the Island – Setting and Narratives of the Lampedusa ‘Border Play’

Auteur : Paolo Cuttitta

The island of Lampedusa is known as an EU border hotspot. Its high degree of ‘borderness’, though, is less the result of its geographical location than the product of a ‘borderization’ process carried out through specific policies, practices and discourses. The introduction explains what Lampedusa’s ‘borderness’ consists in: irregular landings and the changed anthropic and human landscape have turned the island into an ideal observatory for all major issues of the current debate on migration-related border controls. The first section analyses the main factors of the ‘borderization’ process. Specific political choices (establishing a detention centre, concentrating migrants, dispatching border guards, employing patrol boats, involving humanitarian workers etc.) suggest that borders are the result of the placing and interaction of ‘spatial bodies’, as well as of legislative measures and international relations. The paper also regards Italian immigration control policies as a ‘political spectacle’, and Lampedusa as the theatre of the ‘border play’. The second section therefore analyses the two narratives (the securitarian one of the ‘tough’ and the humanitarian one of the ‘humane’ border) prevailing in five different acts of the play, and shows that both are strictly connected and serve the same purpose of governing and managing human mobility.

Read the article

Subtle Technologies Festival in Toronto: Joana Moll presents “AZ:Move and get shot”

The 17th annual Subtle Technologies Festival will take place in Mai, 20-31 2014.

Looking at art, science and DIY culture it will investigate the tools and techniques of harnessing collective knowledge and creativity. The theme for 2014 is “Open Culture”. The festival will celebrate the ways artists and scientists are creating and making use of tools and techniques to harness the collective power, knowledge and creativity of the citizen. Bringing together artists and scientists who are working in these domains will open streams of dialogue leading to increased collaboration between artists and scientists who are interested in contribution of an engaged public.

Joana Moll will present “AZ:Move and get shot” at the exhibition “Open access”, on May 23 – 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Lobby of Architecture Buildling, Ryerson University, 325 Church Street, Toronto

Anthropology as a fine art ?

An article by Carine Claude on Poptronics, who’s analysing works between anthropology and digital creation, amongst which Samira (Nicola Maï) and A crossing industry (Cédric Parizot et Douglas Edric Stanley) shown at the exhibitions of the antiAtlas borders.

“L’anthropologie numérique sort des cénacles universitaires pour se frotter à la création digitale. En témoigne la multiplication des manifestations ouvertes au public, expos, colloques ou festivals, parmi lesquels la deuxième édition des “Anthropologies numériques”, au Cube d’Issy-les-Moulineaux les 19 et 20 mars derniers. L’occasion d’aller observer, entre nouveaux terrains de jeux et questions sur la méthode, comment l’anthropologie se tourne vers l’art pour repenser son approche scientifique.”

Read the article on Poptronics (article in french)

What You Should Know About FBI’s Giant Biometric Database

An article by Tana Ganeva on AlterNet

The FBI’s Next Generation Identification is expected to house 52 million photos searchable by face recognition technology by next year.

Since 2008, the FBI has been hard at work transforming its massive fingerprint database (IAFIS) into an even more massive biometric database called Next Generation Identification. NGI will include iris scans, palm prints and images of faces that can be scanned using face recognition technology and matched to age, race, address, ID number, and immigration status, among other things.

Read the full article on AlterNet

Social Justice and Peace Conference 2014: The [Real] Border Wards

The UTPA Department of Criminal Justice is sponsoring an event to promote human rights, social justice and peace. The goal of this conference/exhibition is to engage the students, the community, and the faculty in a dialogue about social problems which affect our lives here on the border, physically and metaphorically.

Not only do we want to raise social consciousness, we want to provide an avenue for discussing solutions to these problems. The purpose of this conference is to provide a safe space for dialogue and protest. Activists, scholars and campus organizations are invited to share their struggles, as well as their visions for a better future, including solutions we can implement as individuals.

All the informations on UTPA website

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A Google Glass user attacked in San Francisco

A text by Thomas Gorton on Dazed

“As the second Glass wearer in two months is assaulted, will we ever learn to accept Google Glass?”

“The wearable computer Google Glass has been thrust into the spotlight once more after another attack on a user in San Francisco. Last month, the tech writer Sarah Slocum had her Glass snatched in a bar in the early hours of a Saturday morning. This time around, the victim was a 20-year-old reporter called Kyle Russell.”

Read the article on Dazed

Martin De Wulf – Migrations Map

Martin De Wulf
Migrations Map
Interactive map
Visit the project

The map allows you to see for every country X in the world either the top ten providing countries of lifetime migrants to X or the top ten receiving countries of lifetime migrants from X. On top of that, when you let your mouse hover over a country, you can see the total population, the GDP per capita, the HIV and Tuberculosis prevalences and the death rate of children under five.

Martin De Wulf, born in 1978, have been programming this map to learn and have fun with HTML5 technologies. Besides of learning, my only goal is to create a website that can make people think.

Addie Wagenknecht – Data and Dragons: Cloud Farming

Data and Dragons: Cloud Farming, 2014 custom designed printed circuit boards, ethernet patch cables, 80/20 aluminum installation: 31 x 87 x 35 in / 78.7 x 221 x 88.9 cm, Photo by John Berens for bitforms gallery, New York City, USA
placesiveneverbeen.com

Cloud Farming questions the sacred nature of technology by re-contextualizing system hierarchy as a portrait of data. It manifests the cloud, social networks, data, leaks and what forms social capital into a single object. Ultimately its a creative experiment about contemporary power structures as a type of group consciousness, becoming a 3-dimensional map of post-Wikileaks information culture.

Addie Wagenknecht

b.1981, Portland, OR
Lives and works in Innsbruck, Austria

Addie Wagenknecht is an American artist based in Austria whose work explores the tension between expression and technology. Blending conceptually-driven painting, sculpture, and installation with the ethos of hacker culture, Wagenknecht constructs spaces between art object and lived experience. Here, the darker side of systems that constitute lived reality emerge, revealing alternative yet parallel realities. In the context of post-Snowden information culture, Wagenknecht’s work contemplates power, networked consciousness, and the incessant beauty of everyday life despite the anxiety of being surveilled.

A member of Free Art & Technology (F.A.T.) Lab, Wagenknecht was the recipient of a 2014 Warhol Foundation Grant, which she used to found Deep Lab, a collaborative group of researchers, artists, writers, engineers, and cultural producers interested in privacy, surveillance, code, art, social hacking, and anonymity. As an active leader in the open source hardware movement, she also co-founded NORTD Labs, an international research and development collaborative with Stefan Hechenberger, which produces open source projects that have been used and built by millions worldwide. Wagenknecht’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Phillips, New York; LEAP, Berlin; Haus der elektronischen Künste (HeK), Basel; MU, Eindhoven; the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; Gaîté Lyrique, Paris; Beit Ha’ir Museum, Tel Aviv; and many festivals such a GLI.TC/H and the Nooderlicht Photography Festival. Her work has been featured in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Art in America, Vanity Fair, BUST, Vice, and The Economist. Past residencies have included Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York; Culture Lab at Newcastle University, UK; Hyperwerk Institute for PostIndustrial Design, Switzerland; and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

Presently chair of the MIT Open Hardware Summit, Wagenknecht holds a Masters from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Oregon. Wagenknecht’s first solo exhibition in the United States, Shellshock, opened November 2014 at bitforms gallery in New York. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be presented at MU, Eindhoven and HeK, Basel. bitforms

Jean-Pierre Cassarino – The Expansion of the EU Readmission System

Readmission pertains to the removal of aliens who do not or no longer have the right to enter or live in the territory of a country. Countries of destination, of transit and of origin may cooperate on readmission by drafting an agreement.

Historically, politically and legally, readmission is not a new topic in international relations. What, however, is new and unprecedented are the ways in which the cooperation on readmission has been configured and practiced over the last two decades or so, while gaining tremendous momentum in bilateral and multilateral talks.

Why a dual approach?

Bilateral agreements may be formalised, as is often the case, through the conclusion of standard readmission agreements based on reciprocal obligations. However, making an inventory of bilateral standard readmission agreements would never suffice to capture the various cooperative mechanisms that have been designed to facilitate the expulsion of irregular aliens.

Actually, under certain circumstances, two states may agree to conclude a bilateral agreement or arrangement without necessarily formalising their cooperation on readmission. They may decide to graft readmission onto a broader framework of bilateral cooperation (e.g., police cooperation agreements including a clause on readmission, administrative arrangements, and partnership agreements) or to deal with it through other channels (e.g., by using exchanges of letters and memoranda of understanding). Among others, the rationale for such non-standard agreements is to respond flexibly to various contingencies over time. Many EU Member States, as well as other countries around the world, have concluded bilateral non-standard agreements linked to readmission in order to address re-documentation and the delivery of travel documents or laissez-passers to remove unauthorised aliens.

This dual approach explains why it is important to talk about agreements linked to readmission, for it encompasses agreements that can be standard and non-standard. Since its inception in 2006, an inventory of the bilateral agreements linked to readmission has been made based on dual approach. Among others, it is aimed at unveiling the scope of the expanding EU readmission system, across all continents.

The Readmission System

The rationale for the inventory is not only informative. It is also aimed at showing that a whole readmission system exists linking today more than 125 countries of destination, transit, and origin, whether these are poor or rich, large or small, conflict-ridden or not, democratically organized or authoritarian. This is a powerfully inclusive system.

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Biography

Jean-Pierre Cassarino is a political scientist doing research at the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC, Tunisia). Previously, he held a professorship at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (RSCAS, EUI). His research interests focus on patterns of international cooperation as applied to the “management” of international migration and asylum.

Publications: https://irmcmaghreb.academia.edu/JeanPierreCassarino

Email: cassarinojp AT gmail.com

William Walters – Aeroplanes and Deportation

William Walters, Carleton university

Aeroplanes and Deportation
Conference organized by Martina Tazzioli (postdoc Lames LabexMed) in the frame of the LAMES’ seminar Migrations et crises. Discussants: Cédric Parizot (IREMAM, CNRS/AMU), Martina Tazzioli (LAMES/LabexMed, AMU)

10 May 2016, 2.00-5.00 pm, Room PAF (MMSH)

Image : Jean Pierre Cassarino, Réseau des accords bilatéraux liés à la réadmission, 2013

Élisa Ganivet – Esthétique du mur géopolitique

Présentation de l’ouvrage Esthétique du mur géopolitique

Auteure : Élisa Ganivet

Maison d’Edition : Presses de l’Université du Québec, Collection Enjeux Contemporains dirigée par Élisabeth Vallet et Charles-Philippe David, UQAM – Montréal, Chaire Raoul- Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques. Sortie le 1 er Avril 2016 en France

Préface d’Élisabeth Vallet.

Regard d’une centaine d’artistes sur l’esthétique frontalière historique et contemporaine. Des années après la chute du mur de Berlin, à l’heure de la mondialisation et du libre- échange, une cinquantaine de murs sont toujours érigés dans le monde, notamment autour du territoire d’Israël et à la frontière du Mexique et des États-Unis, où des barrières d’environ 500 km de long se dressent. Si les justifications énoncées par les États sont multiples – immigration clandestine, terrorisme, contrebande, etc. –, l’élévation d’une barrière de séparation semble reprendre une formule ancestrale de rejet de l’autre-étranger et transgresse le principe d’universalité. Sa matérialité archaïque entrant en conflit avec l’image d’un monde postmoderne et technologique, le mur cristallise un malaise qui se doit d’être élucidé par l’art. Sa visibilité et son sensationnalisme en font littéralement l’affiche d’un événement géopolitique, que les artistes investissent. Qu’est-ce qui intéresse les artistes si le mur est conjoncturellement éphémère ? Est-ce ses métamorphoses ou bien son cadre spatiotemporel ? L’auteure de cet ouvrage compare trois murs – le mur de Berlin, la barrière de séparation entre Israël et l’autorité palestinienne et la frontière sécurisée entre le Mexique et les États-Unis – selon leur esthétique développée par trois artistes phares : Joseph Beuys, Banksy et Frida Kahlo. L’étude des contextes, enjeux et missions géopolitiques, appliquée à chaque barrière de séparation, rend compte des failles et des défaillances de systèmes a priori bien huilés. Car si le mur renvoie généralement à l’idée d’être chez soi et protégé, il peut aussi être synonyme d’isolement, que ce soit voulu ou non. Il est la structure physique et symbolique d’une dynamique carcérale.

Photo: Larissa Sansour, Bethlehem Bandolero (performance, video) 2005 © Larissa Sansour. Courtesy of the artist

Cartographies of Fear #2

Anne Zeitz & Carolina Sanchez Boe
Cartographies of Fear #2
Installation, 2016

Migrants’ access to new technologies plays an important role in their border crossings and their trajectories. Cartographies of fear #2 presents the experience of a Syrian man in Paris. The videos show visible and invisible places and borders within which he has lived happy moments with his wife, as well as the places that he discovered as an asylum seeker and where he feels vulnerable.

Carolina Sanchez Boe has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Her research focuses on international migration, migration control and containment.

Anne Zeitz has a PhD in Aesthetics, Sciences and Technologies of Arts from the University Paris 8. Her research focuses on the observation concepts and operative images, as well as theories of surveillance, “sousveillance” and the “algorithmic governmentality” in art, literature and film.

Michel Couturier – Calais 1

Michel Couturier
Calais 1
Photography

This artwork is part of a larger project on European ports (Calais, Dover, Catania …). The artist focuses on the infrastructures and apparatuses of control and the regulation of flows of merchandises and people: barriers, checkpoints, gates. This work uses different kinds of media: photos, drawings and video.

Michel Couturier questions the cities and their suburbs since 2001, often related to mythology and its survivals in the modern landscape. His work, which is expressed through photography, video and drawing explores the oddities produced by engineers and examines our relationship with the public space. His recent work addresses transit areas and control places as emblematic places of our living space.

Larbits Sisters – eu4you

Larbits Sisters (Bénédicte et Laure-Anne Jacobs)
eu4you
Interactive installation, 2016
Visit the project

Eu4you starts with the migration crisis that is rattling Europe and has brought President Juncker to plead for a quota system to distribute the refugees between countries. With an equal chance of freedom, equality and prosperity, and taking into account different variables, the eu4you algorithm performs an equation that reconstitutes the visitor’s computational DNA. It rules on the visitor’s destiny: the promise of a golden future on European soil, or not.

Under the name Larbits Sisters, Bénédicte and Laure-Anne Jacobs form a duo. An important part of their work focuses on the exploration of digital technologies. Emerging issues around the Internet such as privacy, digital identity, 2.0 practices form the starting point of their artistic approach.

CoRS (Codesign Research Studio) – Body and borders

CoRS (Codesign Research Studio)
Body and borders
Installation, 2016
Visit the project

Our research questions the purpose and consequences of existing, new and planned border constructions in Europe by investigating their physical manifestation and context. We use architectural tools and methods, including on-site visits, drawings and models, and collect hard and soft data to understand and document the border constructions. But more importantly, we want to study the constructions in relation to the people attempting to get past them and the way in which the constructions relate to the human body.

Codesign Research Studio is a subsidiary of the architecture studio Codesign. CORS works at the intersection between theory and practice, they question the orle and responsibility of architects and explore issues that are rarely highlighted