Global Politics of Non-Knowledge: Borders, power, technology
Date: 20th - 21st June 2022
Location: King’s College London; online
The workshop will bring together contributions from different countries and disciplines. It will take place over two days (20th and 21st June) in a hybrid online/in-person format.
About the workshop
Critical scholarship on borders, migration, and (in)security has explored the productivity of ignorance, nonknowledge, uncertainty, ambiguity, or unpredictability for practices of governing. In particular, border and migration researchers have started vibrant interdisciplinary conversations with literatures in ignorance studies and epistemologies of ignorance, shedding light on the entanglements of ambiguity, uncertainty, opacity, and ignorance in the management, confinement, and containment of people on the move. This workshop aims to advance these conversations by engaging with several key questions related to ‘the other side of knowledge’ in border, migration, and (in)security studies: how can we conceptualise the relation between knowledge, ignorance and non-knowledge in practices of border control and migration management? How is ‘situated nonknowledge’ produced, through which practices, processes and power relations? Finally (and crucially), to what extent can ignorance and non-knowledge be mobilised in struggles against oppression and for justice?
PROGRAMME
DAY 1 - 20th June 2022
12:30 – 17:30
*All times are in British Summer Time (BST)
12:30 – 13:00: Welcome & Teas/Coffee
13:00 – 13:30: INTRODUCTION
Claudia Aradau and Lucrezia Canzutti
13:30 – 14:20: STEPHAN SCHEEL
Lost in translation? Non-knowledge in the (Un)Making of the Deportation Gap
Discussant: Lucrezia Canzutti
14:20 – 15:10: MARGIE CHEESMAN
How not knowing how blockchain works works in humanitarian aid
Discussant: Ana Valdivia
15:10 – 15:30: Break
15:30 – 16:20: SARAH PERRET
The (in)formal governance of EU borders: The role of R&D fundings
Discussant: Emma Mc Cluskey
16:20 – 17:10: KEINA ESPIÑEIRA GONZÁLEZ
Non-asylum at the EU-African land borders? Understanding how border ambiguities affect
international protection in the enclave of Ceuta
Discussant: Nora Stel
17:10 – 17:30: Wrap Up / END OF DAY 1
DAY 2 - 21st June 2022
09:30 – 14:30
*All times are in British Summer Time (BST)
09:30 – 09:50: Welcome Back & Teas/Coffee
09:50 – 10:40: NORA STEL
The Convenience of Contingency and the Intractability of Intent – Reflections on Lebanese Refugee
Governance and the Agency of Non-Knowledge
Discussant: Martina Tazzioli
10:40 – 11:00: Break
11:00 – 11:50: SIBEL KARADAG
Powered by secrecy: Governing migration and borders in Turkey
Discussant: Margie Cheesman
11:50 – 12:40: SHAJ MOHAN
Knowledge and the Obscure
Discussant: Claudia Aradau
12:40 – 13:40: Lunch
13:40 – 14:30: PUBLICATION DISCUSSION
Directions to the Strand Campus can be found here.
