Bordering Migration Workshop - Day 1

Border control policies are implemented to facilitate and restrict mobility in the name of governmental mandates for orderly and secure migration channels. Over the past decades, States have adopted “smarter” approaches to border control to limit access to and stay in their territory of unwanted migrants and border crossers. Bordering processes encompass a plurality of ways in which borders are actively expanded and constricted to regulate mobility beyond and within geographical and colonial boundaries of nation-states. From border walls to algorithms, detention centres to classrooms, bordering poses significant challenges for the human rights of people on the move. Border control and cooperation within and among States can prevent people from accessing refugee protection, restrict movement across Indigenous lands, perpetuate insecure immigration status, and subject people to technological and physical modes of border policing and violence. They increase safety risk, as people desperate for alternatives tend to embark on dangerous journeys often subject to smuggling enterprises. People are treated differently at border sites based on grounds of race, gender, and other identities, showing the deeply embedded discriminatory and oppressive nature of bordering.

This workshop aims to advance transformative border studies, human rights scholarship, and policy from diverse critical and interdisciplinary perspectives in Canada and internationally. The first day of the workshop presents three panels which address migration control policies and practices with a focus on their securitizing nature and their implications for migrants’ rights. The second day of the workshop consists of two panels and a roundtable discussion which elaborate on border regimes in the North American context and probe issues surrounding the Canada-US border crossings, the emerging border technologies, and access to protection. The collective aim of these discussions is to explore the implications of bordering processes for the fundamental rights and freedoms of migrants, and the ways in which borders have been rescaled and reconfigured to regulate mobility. The workshop also seeks to surface innovative theoretical and methodological approaches in migration and border studies.

For more details, see the event's agenda here (external link) .

Click here for Day 2.