The experiential border: Where (what and who) are borders?
Meeting | 12 May 2025

The next Meeting on Migration Experiences will take place on May 12, 2025, starting at 12:30 p.m., with the theme “The experiential border: Where (what and who) are borders?”.

 

Venue
Room B226, Building 4 - Iscte

 

Speaker

Lisa Senecal

PhD Candidate, ICS, University of Lisbon

 

Comment

Nina Amelung

Research Fellow, ICS, University of Lisbon

 

Language

Inglês

 

Abstract

Although it is typical to think about borders as lines drawn on maps, facts or edges of space, my ethnographic research on Malta’s regime of borders reveals several ways in which this simplification of borders requires critical engagement.In this presentation, I aim to problematize that simplification; I will rely on the experiences of a diverse group of border-crossers who migrated to Malta and whom I met there between 2021 and 2023. I will build the case that border-crossers share some surprising commonalities despite the circumstances of their migrations – and that it is those circumstances, more than the act of migrating, that defines “who is a migrant” in the EUropean context. I will conclude there is always a cost to crossing borders; in doing so, I will reveal the differentials of those costs – inequalities that are purposefully crafted. I will conclude borders have transformative and affective consequences which relate with the physicality of borders but materialize the metaphysical impact (often obscured) borders have, too. Borders order and structure physical and social life; they influence, control and regulate mobility. They divide physically, institutionally, conceptually and emotionally. Finally, I will conclude that although it is common to refer to “the border” as a singular entity, borders are multiple. And this multiplicity operates according to imperial logics that have historical precedents. My hope is you will leave this presentation being more aware and critical of borders in your everyday life – and in our collective life.

 

Bios:

Lisa Ann Senecal is a PhD Candidate (Migrations, Anthropology) at ICS-ULisboa. Her research centers around the intersection of race, class, and migratory spaces. Her research focuses on antiracism, inequality, noncitizenship, representations, cultural transformation, and mobility justice as these concepts intersect within a regime of borders and/or in border spaces. By centering the Mediterranean/European/North-South continuum, her project aims to map the Maltese border by teasing apart structural aspects of the border from its embodied aspects with an emphasis on noncitizen subjectivities – that is the actual experience of borders.

Nina Amelung is a sociologist and research fellow at the Institute of Social Science (ICS), Universidade de Lisboa. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Political Sociology, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Critical Migration Studies. She explores relations between emergent publics, matters of citizenship and digital and biometric technologies applied in migration and crime control regimes. She is co-chair of the Thematic Section on Knowledge, Science and Technology of the Portuguese Sociological Association (Associação Portuguesa de Sociologia – APS), the  independent research network STS-MIGTEC and in the leadership team of the Cost Action DATAMIG.

 


 

The Meetings on Migration Experiences are a co-organization between researchers from CIES-Iscte and CRIA, in partnership with the Emigration Observatory, and are aimed at researchers, scholars and other people interested in this area of work.

The main objective is interdisciplinary exchange on studies in the field of international migration. At each meeting, we look at specific research or work, cross-referencing practices and questions in their methodological and/or theoretical aspects, which are underway or have already been completed.

Coordination: Cecília Menduni Luís (CRIA-Iscte), Cláudia Pereira (Observatório Emigração), Jannis Kühne (CRIA-NOVA FCSH), Liliana Azevedo (CIES-Iscte) and Priscilla Santos (CIES-Iscte).