GRAMNet Annual Lecture: Reflections on the Framing of and Responses to the Refugee ‘Crisis’ in Europe
GRAMNet Annual Lecture: Reflections on the Framing of and Responses to the Refugee ‘Crisis’ in Europe
GRAMNet Annual Lecture Series
Date: Friday 16 November 2018
Time: 17:00 - 18:00
Venue: Yudowitz Lecture Theatre, Wolfson Medical School Building
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Professor Cathryn Costello
Website: www.glasgow.ac.uk/gramnet
This lecture looks at the notion of ‘crisis’ in refugee studies, in particular examining the events of 2015 as framed in Europe as ‘the refugee crisis’. While that framing is open to challenge empirically, politically and ethically, it has nonetheless been resonant and powerful. The lecture is prompted by the question: Why do some ‘crises’ generate significant change, while others seem to paralyse?
To understand the nature of crisis, it draws on the writings of the feminist international legal scholar Hilary Charlesworth on crisis in international law, and work on policy failure in migration and EU scholarship. Professor Costello examines the ‘contested construction’ of the events of 2015, which in turn have dictated the range of political responses pursued, and those which were assumed to be politically unviable. That construction has tended to place responsibility for the scale of arrivals with decisions take in late 2015 by Chancellor Merkel, while downplaying the structural forces at work. Moreover, it has treated the suspension of Dublin returns as abnormal, rather than normal. So two ‘normal’ features of EU state practice, keeping a Schengen border open and not even attempting to give effect to all legally possible Dublin returns are construed as exceptional and indeed crisis-inducing.
The lecture will be followed by a wine reception. Everyone is welcome. If you would like to attend, please register on the Eventbrite site.