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JMCE Conference | Borders of the European Union
January 31 @ 5:30 pm - February 1 @ 5:00 pm
January 31–February 1, 2025
Borders of the European Union workshop, a conference organized by the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence at UNC CHapel Hill, explores how European Union border management policies extend beyond physical boundaries to reshape racialized and gendered social and political dynamics within member states. Following the 2015-16 refugee crisis, we’ve witnessed the intensification of border externalization through agreements like the EU-Turkey deal, growing deployment of AI in border decision-making, controversial practices such as Frontex pushbacks, and the rise of anti-migrant rhetoric –all of which construct and rely on racialized and gendered difference of those seeking asylum. We’ve also seen shifting policies and practices guiding refugee reception and resettlement, as well as the launch of programs that “repatriate” asylum seekers (e.g. in Denmark). These developments raise crucial questions about how border regimes transform everyday spaces, from urban neighborhoods to public institutions. Our workshop will examine how these policies create cascading effects that influence internal territorial governance, including the emergence of racialized and gendered asylum and differentiated “rights.” We aim to analyze the legal, spatial, and technological challenges these changes pose to democratic values while working toward developing more just and equitable approaches to border management.
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Conference Program
Friday, January 31, 5:30pm | Keynote
Re-bordering Europe: From Fortress Europe to Border Externalization
John Pickles
UNC-Chapel Hill, Geography
Europe today struggles with questions of colonial legacy, national identity, and the rights and roles of citizens and immigrants. In this presentation, I focus on questions about the future of ‘Europe’ and the new programs, institutions, and geographies it has created. From attempts to close borders to new geographies of border externalization and regional cooperation to the return of Fortress Europe, we will investigate the rapidly changing borderwork of Europeans.
Professor Pickles is an economic geographer trained in political economy and development studies, cultural and social theory, and continental philosophy. His research currently focuses on global production networks, European economic and social spaces particularly post-socialist transformations in Central Europe and Euro-Med Neighborhood Policies in Southern Europe. He also works on the cultural economies of maps and mapping, counter-mapping, and the use of maps in social movements.
He holds BA and MA degrees from Oxford University and Ph.D. degrees form the University of Natal and the Pennsylvania State University. He joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 as the Earl N Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies and the D.W. Patterson Distinguished Professor of International Studies and Geography until 2024 when he became Distinguished Emeritus Professor and Research Professor. His research and teaching focus primarily on issues of geographical and social change, particularly in regions that are undergoing major ruptures in socioeconomic life and under conditions of economic — and often physical — violence. These concerns have their roots in questions of geographical uneven development, whether in post-war Britain, colonial and post-colonial Africa, the unraveling of state socialism in Central Europe, the building of the new Europe, the operation and effects of global apparel production networks, or the struggles over new forms of border management in Europe. Each is heavily inflected through his reading of critical theory, hermeneutic phenomenology, cultural studies, political economy, and post-structural social theory.
He has written and edited several books on globalization and regionalization, state and society in post-socialist Europe, and a history of spaces. His most recent books are Towards Decent Work (co-edited with Arianna Rossi and Amy Luinstra, Palgrave Macmillan and the ILO Better Work Programme, 2014), The Anomie of the Earth: Philosophy, Politics, and Autonomy in Europe and the Americas (co-edited with Federico Luisetti and Wil Kaiser, Duke University Press), Articulations of Capital: Global Production Networks and Regional Transformations (co-authored with Adrian Smith, Robert Begg, Milan Bucek, Poli Roukova, and Rudolf Pastor, Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Books Series, Wiley, 2016), and Geographical Dynamics and Firm Strategy in China (co-authored with Shengjun Zhu and Canfei He, Springer Verlag, 2017).
Saturday, February 1 | 9:30-11:00am
Screening & Discussion | The Invisible: Modern Slavery in Europe
Nora Komposch
University of Bern
Devran Koray Öcal
University of Bern
Saturday, February 1 | 11:15-12:45pm
Panel Discussion I
Stephanie DeGooyer
UNC-Chapel Hill, English & Comparative Literature
Austin Crane
University of South Carolina
Priscilla Layne
UNC-Chapel Hill, Germanic & SLavic Languages & Literatures
Corey Johnson
UNC Greensboro, Geography
This panel brings together an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars examining the ways in which the EU “manages” migration. From policy analysis to interrogating discourses of belonging and adherence to European cultural norms, this panel considers how and why the EU defines not only its borders, but the individuals who cross them.
Panelist Abstracts & BiosSaturday, February 1 | 12:45-1:00pm
Lunch & Poster Presentations
Saturday, February 1 | 2:00-3:30pm
Panel Discussion II
Sophia Nissler
UNC-Chapel Hill, Geography
Jasmin Wagner
Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies
Wei Quan
Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies
Caitilin McMillan
UNC-Chapel Hill, Geography
This roundtable brings together PhD students from across disciplines who consider the definition and construction of EU borders across media. Ranging from textual analysis to urban geography, these panelists provide insight into the development of migrant identities in conversation with the EU’s own development of its borders.
Panelist Abstracts & BiosSaturday, February 1 | 3:30-5:00pm
Zine Making
Sophia Nissler
UNC-Chapel Hill, Geography
Join Geography PhD student Sophia Nissler in a workshop integrating learnings from the conference into zines.
Organization Committee
Banu Gökarıksel
Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sophia Nissler
Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Priscilla Layne
Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Devran Koray Öcal
University of Bern
Co-Sponsors
The Borders of the EU 2025 Conference is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. It is co-sponsored by the UNC Center for European Studies and the UNC Department of Geography.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.