ESC-YLS Colloquium: EU Borders in a Post-Colonial World

ESC-YLS Colloquium #2: EU Borders in a Post-Colonial World

The so-called European “refugee crisis” of 2015 and its aftermath have revealed the true face of the EU: a fortress keeping out third-country nationals from the former colonies leading to thousands of migrants dying in the Mediterranean or at the Belarusian borders, when they are not tortured in the Libyan prisons – financed with EU money. On the other hand, the EU has recently been praised for its solidarity with the Ukrainian refugees welcoming them on the basis of the temporary protection directive although some have denounced the racial selection behind it. This panel aims to discuss the EU as a vehicle of ‘imperial amnesia’ in light of what is happening at EU borders. The speakers will discuss the mechanisms and narrative deployed by the EU and its Member States to keep some migrants out and let others in, particularly in the broader context of post-colonialism and Eurowhiteness.

Prof. Dimitry Kochenov (Central European University)
Dr. Hans Kundnani (NYU / Royal Institute of International Affairs)
Chaired by Prof. Seyla Benhabib (Yale University / Columbia University)

Dimitry V. Kochenov leads the Rule of Law research at CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest and is Professor of Legal Studies at CEU Department of Legal Studies in Vienna. This spring he is also Malyi Fellow at Chicago Law School. Prof. Kochenov focuses on citizenship, justice, colonialism and the principles of public law and held visiting positions and fellowships at Princeton, Oxford, NYU Law School, LUISS, Turin, Osaka and UNAM inter many alia. He advises governments and international organizations in the matters of his interest and seved as the founding chairman of the Investment Mirgation Council (Geneva). His latest book Citizenship (MIT Press) was translated into several languages and reviewed in the NYRB.

Hans Kundnani is a visiting fellow at the Remarque Insitute at New York University and an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop fellow. He was previously the director of the Europe programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London. His most recent book is Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (2023).

Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Emerita at Yale University where she taught from 2001 to 2020. She is currently Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Law Adjunct at Columbia University, and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Philosophy. She is also a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. She is currently at work on a Monograph for Polity Press called “At the Margins of the Modern State” and has edited a collection of articles with Ayelet Shachar on Migration and Refugee topics called, Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects: Migration and Asylum New Border Regimes.

Part of a colloquium series on the future of European integration co-organized by Yale’s European Studies Council and the Yale Law School European Law Association.

Event will be in person and on Zoom.

Visit the ESC-YLS Colloquium Series page to learn more about all of the events: https://europeanstudies.macmillan.yale.edu/events/esc-yls-colloquium-series