On Wednesday, April 3, 2024, join Brice Arsène Mankou, Professor of Sociology at the University of Rouen Normandie, for a lecture as part of the Winter 2024 lecture series at the Jean Monnet Center Montreal. The presentation is titled: “Europe and Border Surveillance.”

The lecture will take place from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm at the University of Montreal, 3200 Jean-Brillant Street, Room B-3250. The lecture will be in French. No registration is required.

“In the context of the adoption of the immigration law in France, Europe continues to close its borders through strict policies towards migrants. This Europe, supported by the far-right, places border surveillance at the heart of migrant control. The Mediterranean and Lampedusa become floating cemeteries (Mankou, 2022), where inhospitable rules are erected as border control rules to better monitor and punish migrants (Michel Foucault, 1975). With the closure of the Sangatte camp in Pas de Calais in 2003 and the subsequent destruction of the Calais jungle, the situation for migrants at the Franco-British border has become even more complex and violent. Condemned to a purposeless wait, these migrants from the Horn of Africa experience new forms of outdoor confinement. This transforms the Calais border into an open prison for migrants (Mankou, 2013) who are held at the border. It is the contemporary paradox of the border, considered both as a zone of impossible passage and as a no man’s land with no way out.”