Description
This panel brings together five very different papers that intervene around the same theme, the role that international relations can play in othering refugees and migrants. It questions the role of scholars, governments, NGOs and activists in the presentation and hierarchisation of migration narratives, and the importance of consciously preventing unconscious harm. One paper explores the roles of maps and map making in establishing spaces where only a particular group of people are welcome and others are not. A second engages with questions of people smuggling and securitisation, a system of governance established to create those on the inside and those deemed to be other. The third paper engages with academia itself and the practise of presenting findings to non-academic audiences through the medium of exhibitions. Reflecting, as well, on the role of the academic in presenting findings and the unconscious effects of these presentations. The fourth paper draws on postcolonialism to engage with questions of border crossing in to and out of Europe. The final paper brings together scholarship and activism to reflect critically on the practice of the two authors and the effect they can have on the presentation and re-presentation of refugees and migrants. The panel explores these questions and advocates for caution in the methods and approaches used to engaging with questions of displacement and border crossing.
