CRS Seminar: Crisis, what (refugee) crisis? The business of ‘business-as-usual’ in EU migration governance

With guest speaker:
Emma Carmel, Senior Lecturer, Department of Social & Policy Sciences, University of Bath
This presentation examines how the idea of ‘the refugee crisis’ emerged at a specific historical moment in the European Union, what happened to this idea and why it matters. Using tools of policy anthropology I show how the idea of ‘the refugee crisis’ has given meaning and impetus to specific governing practices that disguise the political and moral economies of ‘business-as-usual’ migration governance in the EU. The idea of ‘the refugee crisis’ was adopted as a political strategy that calcifies structural inequalities between states, and between private market actors and ‘the Union’; and patterns of exclusion, detention, exploitation and expulsion for migrants.
Dr Carmel works at the intersection of sociology, political economy and politics, researching the social and political dynamics of public policy governance. Her recent work examines the transnational governance of migration in the European Union and its implications for socio-political inequalities. She is starting work on the normalization of digital governance as an everyday governmental practice.