Claire Rodier, Iolanda Évora, Mehdi Alioua
Migrations
Mehdi Alioua presentation
Exile, Memory and Social Connection: capturing Africa in movement
How can we explain exile in Africa today, in a paradoxical contemporary context, in which different regimes of mobility overlap with one another and are beginning to proliferate, linked to globalisation and the reinforcement of migratory controls, especially due to pressure from the European Union (EU)? The reinforcement of borders all over Africa, especially its external frontiers bordering on the European Union, help to prolong the duration of migration and to make the migratory conditions of certain categories of the population far harsher, without, however, doing anything to stop it. The migratory experience then becomes a fully-fledged social time, its duration is a provocation of our modern times. A temporal effect aggravates the spatial markers, making exile a contemporary experience that is increasingly shared by categories of very different populations in Africa. In a world in movement where travelling is everyone’s reality, but where not everyone moves with the same facility or as they would actually like to, exile has become a form of socialisation. My paper will be based on the experience of exiles coming from sub-Saharan Africa who have settled in Mediterranean Africa to work, trade, study and sometimes “sneak through” the European borders. People who have had to fight to have their rights recognised. Although, in Morocco, they have succeeded in changing the high security-based treatment to which they were subjected, the fact remains that they still do not enjoy the full rights that this country has granted them.
Live streaming available on the day at arquivoteatromariamatos.pt
Sinopsis
Migration and the different conditions of mobility to which the citizens of the world are subjected is one of the themes that have called for greater political and ethical attention in recent years, a situation that is expected to continue in the near future. Besides the announcements of public policies or news of the humanitarian catastrophes that have been occurring along Europe’s borders, in reality we still know very little about the concrete experiences of those who decide to migrate. In this debate, we attempt to undertake a critical and informed review of these experiences, comparing one perspective, about the reality of the migratory movements taking place in Africa, with another one, which looks at what is happening on European soil.
Mehdi Alioua, a sociologist and lecturer in Political Sciences at the International University of Rabat and an antiracist activist, will bring us his view of the migratory realities taking place in Africa, in a paper entitled Exile, Memory and Social Connection: capturing Africa in movement, in which he will examine the different regimes of mobility that overlap with one another and proliferate in Africa, linked to globalisation and the reinforcement of migratory controls by the European Union. Claire Rodier (France), a jurist, Director of GISTI (Groupe d’Information et de Soutien des immigrés – the Group providing Information and Support to Immigrants) and a co-founder of the Euro-African network Migreurop, will question the notion of a “migratory crisis” in a paper entitled Is Europe confronted with a “migratory crisis”? Perspectives and implications of the European Union’s immigration and asylum policies. This will be followed by a debate chaired by Iolanda Évora, a Social Psychologist, and postdoctoral researcher (PNPD/CAPES) at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, an associate researcher of CEsA/ISEG and a teacher on the Master’s Degree course in Cooperation in International Development.