About the Workshop

Europe’s border regime is being reorganised around a political project that exposes people on the move to increased state violence and racialisation, rendering them increasingly searchable, easier to sort, confine, and be removed. The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum which officially entered into full effect on June 12th, establishes technologically mediated border screening, strengthens its biometric registration (with additional biometric data collected from minors of 6 years of age), expands Eurodac records with data retention periods of 10 years for asylum applicants, and accelerates its border and return procedures into core features of the EU’s migration governance. Meanwhile, the European Parliament recently approved its position on the new Return Regulation, with the support of Frontex throughout the process, further strengthening the legal and administrative machinery of detention, cooperation obligations, deportation, and offshore return hubs.

Following recent civil society warnings about the risk of ICE-style enforcement in Europe, our research workshop seeks to address these developments from a critical and reflexive perspective. We, particularly, seek to understand how European institutions, member states, agencies, and private actors build systems that erode asylum rights and risk violating the principles of non-refoulement. Ultimately, these developments expose people on the move to intensified forms of monitoring, racialisation, confinement, and removal. The workshop takes place within a wider authoritarian security turn, including the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 agenda that reflects the growing fusion of migration control, policing, defence, and surveillance technology.

Tentative agenda

• 09:45-10:00 Arrival (coffee + tea)
• 10:00-10:45 Lydia Emmanouilidou (Solomon) + TBC
• 10:45-11:00 Break
• 11:00-11:10 Eleni Kyriakou (NKUA, DATAMIG)
• 11:10-11:25 Kinan Alajak (UU, DATAMIG)
• 11:25-11:30 Break
• 11:30-12:30 Participant sharing + open discussion
• 12:30-13:00 Lunch

Organisers: Charis Papaevangelou, University of Amsterdam / IViR / ALGOSOC, and Eleni Kyriakou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens / DATAMIG

Supported by the RPA Global Digital Cultures.

To Register

The workshop brings together PhD researchers and ECRs to discuss these ongoing developments, how they relate to participants’ work, and some of the challenges they face. This will be an interactive workshop, and participants are invited to briefly share their research and reflections on their experience working on these topics. No formal presentation is required. The discussion will focus especially on research challenges across different geographies and areas of work in the current context of the shifting socio-political climate to the right, the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, and recent return/deportation developments.

As spaces are limited, we will prioritise PhD researchers, with some room for postdoctoral and early-career researchers whose work closely fits the theme.

To express interest, please email Charis Papaevangelou at c.papaevangelou@uva.nl by Wednesday 1 July with a short 2-3 sentence note on your research or relevant work. Limited travel support may be available, prioritising people in precarious positions.