MiReKoc Wednesday Seminar Series by Özgün Topak on Capture & Evasion at Africa-Euro Migrant Journeys

This presentation draws on fieldwork interviews with migrants who fled their home countries (Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan) and irregularly travelled through Sahara, Libya and the Mediterranean Sea, and reached Europe. It demonstrates how, throughout their journeys, migrants were targeted by various state and non-state actors for capture (for purposes including immobilization, extortion, abuse and slavery), and how they evaded and resisted capture. Building on and contributing to literatures on migration, bio/necropolitics, borders, and surveillance, the paper advances the categories of bio/necropolitical capture and evasion. The paper emphasizes the key role of non-state actors in acts of capture, race as a central category of capture, the bio/necropolitical effects of capture on migrants, and the acts of evasion (which includes not only bodily escape, but various forms of calculations and psychological tactics) as agency. Focusing on the dynamics of capture/evasion in migrants’ long journeys to Europe (which includes multiple border crossings), the presentation provides a more holistic (even though still incomplete) account of capture/evasion dynamics beyond a single borderzone.

Online

Lifelong Learning