Workshop: Unequal EuropesDate (with Manuela Boatcă)

The workshop is followed by a lecture the same day in the evening.

Manuela Boatcă is Professor of Sociology and Head of Global Studies with a focus on macrosociology at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany. She works on world-systems analysis, postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, gender in modernity/coloniality and the geopolitics of knowledge in Eastern Europe and Latin America. She is author of Global Inequalities beyond Occidentalism, Ashgate 2015 and co-editor (with E. Gutiérrez Rodríguez and S. Costa) of Decolonizing European Sociology. Transdisciplinary Approaches, Ashgate 2010.

In light of the debates about refugees and migrants from non-EU states into "Fortress Europe", the negotiations about and consequences of Brexit, as well as the struggle of Western states against Islamist terrorists, the question of what Europe actually acquires renewed prominence. Who belongs to it and who does not? Who decides on this and what are the criteria? The term "Europe" - and even more so the Schengen and Eurozone of the "European Union" - is often used in a way that suggests that Europe is a coherent entity. The EU community of states, in turn, implies that only the members of the EU are "European". The current dire situation of people seeking refuge in the EU dramatically demonstrates how this understanding leads to isolation and preservation of vested rights, often at the expense of human rights and human lives.
Historical perspectives show that Europe has always been more than a geographical reference. Rather, the term has always reflected the geopolitics and prevailing knowledge of the respective historical contexts. The way in which the EU, reduced to the Schengen states and the Eurozone, currently deals with migration and citizenship points to a long tradition of self-narration in Western Europe as the origin of modernity, progress and superior civilisation. As such, parts of Western Europe presented themselves as a model to be exported to the "rest" of the world. 

The workshop addresses the historical and contemporary contexts in which this model has produced unequal and hierarchically ordered Europes in other parts of the continent and the world, from Eastern Europe to parts of the Caribbean and South America.

There will be the opportunity to discuss ongoing research projects of PhD candidates. If your project (or aspects of your work) speaks to the theme of the workshop you are warmly invited to present your project.
If you wish to participate in the workshop please send and email to Julia Büchele (j.buechele@unibas.ch). If you wish to also discuss your work during the workshop, please include a short description of your project no later than March 20.

Further information:Workshop

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