Political humanitarianism, the Black Mediterranean and border violence

WHO?

Beppe Caccia (Mediterranea), David Yambio (Alliance for the Refugees in Libya), Ida Danewid (University of Sussex), Vivian Gerrand (Deakin University) and others!

WHAT?

This unconference panel is an ‘egalitarian exchange of questions’, which aims to bring humanitarian organisations into dialogue with university-based activists working for the rights and dignity of migrant people within and beyond Europe. Among other questions, we will discuss what the historical role of mobility controls has been in capturing and disciplining a mobile workforce, and how activist-academic discourse can build practically applicable counter-narratives to this. We will critique and formulate political alternatives to today’s humanitarian discourse by exploring non-statist forms of care and communality seen among Mediterranean communities. We will examine new possibilities thrown up by the way the Black Mediterranean and ‘bordered’ violence have changed over the past 20 years. We will centre the role of refugees as protagonists in the fight for human rights, particularly in the context of Libyan refugees in Italy. These questions, collectively reflected upon, will feed into the creation of an action plan for use by university communities who wish to bridge the gap between academia, humanitarian activism and journalism for migrant rights.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

• Dr. Ida Danewid is a social and political theorist based in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex. Her research interests are in anticolonial political thought, the black radical tradition, gender studies, and histories of internationalism “from below.” She is the author of Resisting Racial Capitalism: An Antipolitical Theory of Refusal (Cambridge University Press).

• Vivian Gerrand is a scholar of alternative / counter narratives, migration, citizenship, postcoloniality, radicalisation and resilience who has been studying cultures of migration in Italy since 2003. She lives with European heritage on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nation in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia), where she was born.
  

• David Yambio (Alliance for the Refugees in Libya) – To be completed
  

• Beppe Caccia (Mediterranea)- To be completed