The Shifting Border – Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility | DEMOS21

The American University of Paris welcomes Prof. Ayelet Shachar, Tel Aviv University, for a talk entitled "The Shifting Border – Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility." This talk is part of the Contemporary European Democratic Theory theme of the DEMOS21 event series organized by the Center for Critical Democracy Studies.

This event is co-organized with Professor Julian Culp

The border is one of the most urgent issues of our times. We tend to think of a border as a static line, but recent bordering techniques have broken away from the map, as governments have developed legal tools to limit the rights of migrants before and after they enter a country's territory. The consequent detachment of state power from any fixed geographical marker has created a new paradigm: the shifting border, an adjustable legal construct untethered in space. This transformation upsets our assumptions about waning sovereignty, while also revealing the limits of the populist push toward border-fortification. At the same time, it presents a tremendous opportunity to rethink states' responsibilities to migrants. Shachar’s book proposes a new, functional approach to human mobility and access to membership in a world where borders, like people, have the capacity to move.

To register for this event, please email Julian Culp at jculpaup.edu.