People are on the move. Globally 281 million people are estimated to be international migrants voluntarily moving from their place of birth (IOM, 2024) and simultaneously 108.4 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced (UNHCR, 2022). While the causes and experiences of both voluntary migration and forced displacement are complex and diverse, at their heart are issues relating to unequal state formation, enduring inequality and bordering practices. Race, Refuge & Repair aims to explore the intersection of migration and racialised border practices taking Tendayi Achiume’s work on decolonial migration as its intellectual entry point to address the central question of what is owed, by whom, to Global South citizens on the move? This colloquium encourages the submission of papers that draw on insights from law, criminology, history, critical race and ethnic studies, refugee studies, and anthropology to explore and offer a new understanding of the relationships between, and the co-constitution of, colonial and postcolonial governance, international law, migration, and refugee protection. 

In her ground-breaking work on migration as decolonisation, Achiume proposes that former colonial and current imperial powers are obliged to open their borders to their former colonial subjects to redress past and on-going relations of domination and subordination. Using this insight as the starting point for our discussion, we would welcome submissions of papers that explore five distinct lines of enquiry: 

How did colonialism and de-colonisation shape the development of international law and the protection of refugees? 

How might we unpick the historical specificities of the colonial and neo-colonial  economic, political and cultural ties that inform current-day migration? 

What does close attention to how asylum, criminalisation, and racialisation are configured and deployed at the border illuminate about current legal conceptions of the obligations owed to Global South citizens? 

How do we think about South-South migration and refugee practices in a globally stratified refugee protection system? 

How do we conceptualise reparation and decolonial repair in the context of global mobility?

SUBMISSION DETAILS 

We request that you submit your abstracts (300 words) by 14 February 2025 to racerefugerepair@gmail.com. Final papers of 5000 - 6000 words will be due by 1 May 2025. Limited funding is available to support the travel and accommodation of participants coming from the Global South. Please indicate in your submission if it is not possible for you to secure institutional funding to support your participation.

Race, Refuge and Repair: Rethinking Migration from the Global South

The NATO Cyber Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, the War Studies Research Centre of
the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Amsterdam Centre for International Law (ACIL) are
organizing an international conference on the law applicable to the use of biometrics by armed forces,
contractors working with armed forces, and ICT companies involved in military acquisition and
procurement. The aim of the conference is to provide a platform for debate between academics,
practitioners and policy-makers to discuss the legal aspects of the military use of this technology. The
conference will build on the fruitful discussions held during two previous conferences devoted to this
topic held in Amsterdam (May 2023) and Tallinn (May 2024).


The conference will take place on 23 – 24 October in Tallinn, Estonia. The format is currently planned
to be in-person.


We invite those interested to submit a proposal to present a paper at the conference.

Calling All Papers!

Military, War and Peace

University of Georgia

Military, War and Peace