The current socio-political context is characterised by Brexit and Europe’s shoring up of borders in response to irregular migration via the Mediterranean, hyper-criminalisation of migrants, growth of corporate involvement in the management of migration, travel bans, rise of right-wing populism, racisms and xenophobic sentiments across much of the West, and rapid erosion of rights. At the same time, there are constantly new modes of solidarity and resistance emerging, which are also subject to state responses and controls.

This event aims to bring together scholars at various stages of their careers, third sector workers, and people with direct experience of immigration controls and borders to examine the theme of border harms from different substantive angles and theoretical perspectives. The idea of border harms encompasses the variety of ways that bordering practices produce harm and are interconnected with race and racisms. The symposium organisers therefore invite proposals on any of the following broad areas:

• The policing of migration
• Refugees and asylum seekers
• Border deaths
• Migration and state violence
• Resistance, solidarity, protest, and advocacy
• Immigration detention
• Deportation
• Foreign national prisoners
• The criminalisation of solidarity
• The politics of reform and advocacy
• Everyday borders and bordering practices
• Racialisation, securitisation, criminalisation, and surveillance
• Brexit and the ‘hostile environment’
• Populism, nationalism, and citizenship practices
• Empire, colonialism, and state racisms

In addition to academic papers, proposals are welcome for other types of participation, including workshops, performances, and art. Participants are strongly encouraged to consider issues of race, gender, and other social factors in their contributions.

This event is interdisciplinary and will be of interest to scholars from criminology, sociology, social policy, law, human geography, anthropology, and psychology, as well as people with lived experience of border harms and NGO workers involved in practice, advocacy, policy, and research. Attendance will be free.

Confirmed keynote speakers are Professor Shahram Khosravi (Stockholm University), author of ‘Illegal’ Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders (Palgrave, 2010) and editor of After Deportation: Ethnographic Perspectives (Palgrave, 2018), and Dr Alpa Parmar (University of Oxford), Associate Director of Border Criminologies and co-editor of Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control: Enforcing the Boundaries of Belonging (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Please email your proposal (250 words maximum) to the symposium organisers, Monish Bhatia, Gemma Lousley, and Sarah Turnbull (Birkbeck, University of London), by 5:00pm on Friday, 6 April 2018 at BorderHarms@gmail.com. A publication is being planned based on a selection of work presented at the symposium. If you are interested in putting your work forward for consideration in this publication, please so indicate in your proposal. Thank you!