Rights and resistance as retemporalisation: Reflections on combatting global bordering

Abstract: This presentation reflects on varied externalised bordering modalities and strategies to protect migrants and citizens. It argues that collaboration among agencies, states, and researchers have framed poor people’s inclinations to move as dangerous betrayals of law, community, country, and self. Wealthy states use the accounts and materials they produce as foundations for externalised controls seeking to prevent future deviations through current interventions. In search of alternatives, I consider three potential affronts on contemporary controls: bodily assault on borders or ‘storming the gates’; ‘migration as decolonisation’; and broader practical and narrative efforts to destabilise histories and territories. Drawing on research on migration in and out of Africa, it ultimately proposes an approach informed by notions of ’nomadic power’ and decolonial imaginaries as the most potent opportunities for countering the moralising affect underlying current externalisation and containment projects.

Loren B Landau is Professor of Migration and Development at the University of Oxford, Research Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Centre for Migration & Society, and co-director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab (MGL). He previously held visiting and faculty positions at Princeton, Georgetown, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He holds an MSc in Development Studies (LSE) and a PhD in Political Science (Berkeley) and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
His interdisciplinary scholarship explores mobility, multi-scale governance, and the transformation of socio-political communities across the Global South. Along with continued work on xenophobia, inclusion, and representation, he currently oversees a multi-year initiative exploring mobility, temporality, and urban politics in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. To help realign the politics of knowledge production on human mobility, he spearheads multiple initiatives supporting critical migration and urban studies across sub-Saharan Africa including the Academy for African Urban Diversity and the African Research University Alliance’s programme on ‘emerging urban subjectivities’ supporting doctoral students in Nairobi, Cape Town, Harare, Accra, and Johannesburg.

Registration required: https://forms.office.com/e/EceuBRRfxk?origin=lprLink

Wednesday, March 12th, 2025, from12:00 to 2:00 pm
REPI - Université libre de Bruxelles
Campus du Solbosch – REPI RT39 Spaak Room
39 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt
1050 Bruxelles

BIM - REPI - Recherche et Etudes en Politique Internationale