Open Lecture 5 September: Ayelet Shachar

Date: 5 September 2024, 16:15–18:00
Location: Humanities Theatre
Type: Lecture
Organiser: The lecture is organised with the kind support of Uppsala Forum for Democracy, Peace and Justice, the Swedish Institute for International Law (SIFIR), the Wenner-Gren Foundations, the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society, Uppsala University and the Swedish Research Council.

Time and Space in the Governance of Migration

Professor Ayelet Shachar (University of Toronto) is one of the world’s leading authorities on migration and citizenship. In this lecture, delivered as part of the International Workshop on Time, Temporalities, and Migration Law (5–6 September 2024), she addresses critical issues concerning borders, migration control, and the temporal dimensions of migration law. The lecture is open to all members of the academic community and offers a unique opportunity to engage with one of the most distinguished legal scholars of our time.

Discussants: Associate Prof. Martijn Stronks (VU Amsterdam) and Prof. Sofia Näsström (Uppsala University).

The lecture is followed by a reception (18.00-19.00). Please register here if you wish to attend https://doit.medfarm.uu.se/bin/kurt3/kurt/8871919.

The International Workshop on Time, Temporalities and Migration Law is co-convened by Prof. Patricia Mindus and Prof. Rebecca Thorburn Stern (Uppsala) and Assoc. Prof. Martin Stronks (VU Amsterdam). For more information about the workshop, please visit https://www.temporalitiesconference24.com/.

Short bio Ayelet Shachar

Ayelet Shachar (LL.M., J.S.D, Yale Law School) is the R.F. Harney Chair in Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies at the University of Toronto. Professor Shachar has published extensively on topics of citizenship theory, immigration law, highly skilled migration and global inequality, multiculturalism and women’s rights, law and religion in comparative perspective, and the fraught relations between human rights law and territorial conceptions of sovereignty. She is the author of over 100 articles as well as several award-winning books, including Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2001), The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2009), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Shachar et al., eds., Oxford University Press, 2017); and The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility (Critical Power Series, Manchester University Press, 2020).

Ayelet Shachar

Abstract

We think of the border as a static line, but recent bordering techniques have broken away from the map. Seeking to appease anti-immigrant sentiments, governments across the globe have introduced increasingly draconian control measures that stretch the border both spatially and temporarily. Bordering activities now take place far away from actual territorial frontiers and migrants are often stopped long before they reach their desired destinations. Today’s highly complex and opaque legal regimes governing mobility lead to the clampdown of the basic rights and protections afforded to those on the move while simultaneously proclaiming adherence to national, regional, and international law standards. In this gap between commitment and action, the rule of law and arbitrariness, the principles of human rights and the vicissitudes of unaccountable power, lies violence and despair. To excavate these harsh realities and reveal potential openings for democratic contestation and claims-making, this keynote lecture will revisit afresh one of the most pressing issues of our times: the transnational movement of peoples across the globe and the increasingly punitive responses – deployed under color of law – to arrest mobility, evade rights, detach borders from fixed territorial markers and impact the temporalities of migration control. After explaining the key causes behind these developments, providing illustrative comparative examples, and cautioning against the attenuation of legality in the process, the discussion will turn to explore what kind of responses may be developed to counter these trends by “re-attaching” rights and protections to persons on the move wherever and whenever they encounter the wrath of the state and the power of its border control authority.

The lecture is organised with the kind support of Uppsala Forum for Democracy, Peace and Justice, the Swedish Institute for International Law (SIFIR), the Wenner-Gren Foundations, the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society, Uppsala University and the Swedish Research Council.