Description

A live stream of this event will be available. Please note that the stream will not load until shortly before the event start time. 

Please join the Global Migration Lab for another event in its speaker series examining contemporary issues and challenges in global migration governance.

Kelsey P. Norman: “Strategic Indifference: Understanding Responses to Migrant and Refugee Settlement in Mediterranean Host Countries”

Hiba Sha’ath: “At Cross Purposes: A Field-Based Perspective on IOM’s Framing(s) of Migration in Libya”

Comments by Craig Damian Smith

The Central Mediterranean has been the site of mass irregular migration for at least the past decade. Overloaded boats full of desperate people have come to dominate media and popular imagery. Growing attention to the often-dire conditions of migrants in Sahel and North African transit states provides an important check on European claims that “breaking” smuggling rings and criminalizing humanitarian NGOs can co-exist with the promise of development aid and protecting the rights of migrants. Indeed, it is now clear that Europe’s externalized migration controls have dire consequences for migrants, help support autocratic governments, and undermine international protection norms.

However, the focus on Europe’s policy challenges and its ability to “externalize” controls ignores the interests, choices, and domestic politics in African transit and destination states. Likewise, International Organizations are characterized as passive vehicles of European policies, obscuring their significant interests and internal politics. This panel will unpack the policies and interests of Mediterranean transit and receiving states, explore how International Organizations mediate between their own and diverse state interests, and ask how these dynamics affect irregular migration in the region.

Kelsey Norman is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science and the Institute for European Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and an instructor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She has conducted several years of field research throughout North Africa.

Hiba Sha’ath is a second year PhD student in Human Geography at York University. Prior to joining York, she worked on data analysis, research coordination and reporting with IOM Libya’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) program from 2016 to 2017, and with IOM’s regional office for West and Central Africa in spring and summer of 2018.

This speaker series is supported in part by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in the lead up to the 2019 International Metropolis Conference.

Description

What determines implicit associations and explicit attitudes towards belligerent states during wartime? Scholars have increasingly noted the important role played by both implicit (or affect-based) and explicit (or cognition-based) attitudes in explaining important elements of political behavior, but there has been little prior research on implicit attitudes during wartime. Further, there is theoretical and empirical disagreement as to whether one of several possible identity categories, such as citizenship or ethnicity, or the dynamics of the conflict should determine attitudes. We use an implicit association test (IAT) and a questionnaire in four Ukrainian cities to determine 600 respondents’ relative preferences for Ukraine or Russia, deploying nationally representative survey data to perform robustness checks on our IAT recruitment and measurement strategy. We find that ethnicity does not predict absolute preference for one state over the other, but rather that all ethnic groups across all cities express pro-Ukraine views on average in both explicit attitudes and implicit associations. The relatively high degree of congruence between explicit and implicit attitudes, the latter of which are very difficult to manipulate and are therefore immune from social desirability bias or other forms of preference falsification, suggests that respondents are generally comfortable expressing their pro-Ukraine views. These findings speak to international relations literature on diversionary conflict and rally-effects and comparative politics literature on ethnicity and conflict. They challenge theories that suggest ethnic minority diaspora populations (in this case, ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine) may feel allegiance to an external homeland in times of conflict.

Aaron Erlich is an Assistant Professor at McGill University. His current research interests include the impact of information in developing countries, measurement, democratization, and experimental design. Previous work has appeared in American Political Science Review and Comparative Political Studies, among other journals.

Description

The sixteenth century witnessed a proliferation of military texts written by French noblemen who were veterans of the Italian Wars and religious wars. In these texts, authors developed a new masculine standard through how they represented noblemen in combat. They abandoned the medieval trope of the knight and replaced it with that of the captain. Religious piety was an essential aspect of this change as the authors incorporated a renewed emphasis on crusade in their idealised representation of nobility. In the beginning of the period, authors’ religious ideals conflicted with political realities as they placed crusader imagery alongside gleeful descriptions of France waging war against Popes and allying with Protestants and Muslims against Catholics. These inherent contradictions did not resolve themselves until the latter half of the century when authors’ glorification of holy war dissipated as France plunged into its vicious cycle of religious conflict that shattered the social fabric of the nobility. The bloodshed between Frenchmen over religion meant that representations of noblemen as imagined crusaders ceased to be a favourable trope in military literature. Religious fanaticism was no longer glorified, and thus noblemen needed to present themselves as secular actors devoid of aggressive religious motivations. Authors continued to utilise the trope of the pious captain but without its original crusader rhetoric.

Benjamin (Benji) Lukas is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. His dissertation, “From Knights to Captains: The construction of nobility through masculinity and warfare in sixteenth-century France,” examines the changes in the representation of nobility in sixteen-century military literature. His research interests include the study of masculinity, warfare, religious conflict, and sexual violence.

Description

Dr. Skubii’s research aims at broadening and rethinking our understanding of the Holodomor from a material perspective. She will discuss the importance of material items and commodities in saving children’s lives, both within their families and in orphanages. By focusing on children’s consumer goods, she will examine the mechanisms of distribution and allocation of consumer goods, as well as the spaces and practices of consumption by children in 1932-1933.

Dr. Iryna Skubii is an Associate Professor at Department for UNESCO “Philosophy of Human Communication” and Socio-humanitarian Disciplines at the Petro Vasylenko Kharkiv National Technical University of Agriculture. Her research interests include economic and social history, gender studies, consumption and materiality, and history of childhood in early Soviet Ukraine. She holds a Ph.D. degree from Karazin National University (2013). In 2016, Professor Skubii was a fellow of the German-Ukrainian Commission of Historians and undertook research at Ludvig-Maximillians University in Munich. In 2016-2017, she won research grants from the Shevchenko Scientific Society in America and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. In 2017, Professor Skubii published her monograph “Trade in Kharkiv in the years of NEP (1921-1929): between the economy and everyday life.”

Description

Farid Shafiyev presents a study of Imperial Russian and Soviet Resettlement policies in the South Caucasus during the 19-20th centuries and their impact on the ethnic conflicts in the region, especially the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The book investigates the nexus between imperial practices, foreign policy, religion and ethnic conflicts. Taking a comparative approach Dr. Shafiyev explores the most active phases of resettlement, when the state imported and relocated waves of Germans, Russian sectarians and Armenian settlers into the South Caucasus and deported thousands of others. He also offers insights on the complexities of empire-building and managing space and people in the Muslim borderlands.

Farid Shafiyev is a diplomat and scholar from Azerbaijan. He holds a PhD from Carleton University and an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government as well as Bachelor of Law and Diploma in History from Baku State University. Farid Shafiyev served as ambassador of Azerbaijan to Canada and currently posted in the Czech Republic. He is author of numerous articles and op-eds.

Description

Please join the Global Migration Lab for another event in its speaker series examining contemporary issues and challenges in global migration governance.

A live stream of this event will be available shortly before the panel begins. 

Anne Staver: “Of two minds: reasserting national control while negotiating global migration governance”

James Milner: “Collective action in a time of populism: Everyday politics and the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees”

Discussant: Jennifer Hyndman, Director of the Centre for Refugees Studies, York University

Moderator: Randall Hansen, Interin Director, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

Signed in December 2018, the Global Refugee and Global Migration Compacts are an admission that the challenges of migration are best approached through cooperation and collective action.

The Compact on Refugees recognizes the unequal burden placed on Global South states, which host refugees, and rich Global North states, which pay to keep them in regions of origin. Recognizing that most refugees will not return home or be resettled, the Compact proposes new solidarity, development, and finance mechanisms to foster the inclusion and development of displaced people and host populations alike. While promising, displacement crises continue to proliferate, host states remain under-funded, and programming faces major delivery challenges.

In terms of the Migration Compact, scholars have long argued that state interests are largely incompatible with attempts at global migration governance. Yet, in 2016 the International Organization for Migration became a UN agency, and the vast majority of states supported the Compact with a goal of facilitating safe, orderly, and legal migration. At the same time, right-wing parties in liberal democracies rallied against the Compact, arguing it would erode state sovereignty, and several prominent states “pulled out”.

This panel will unpack the potential for global migration governance, responsibility-sharing, and addressing collective action problems in the face of burden-shifting, populism, and a growing desire to assert control.

James Milner is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Carleton University. He is also currently Project Director of LERRN: The Local Engagement Refugee Research Network, a 7-year, SSHRC-funded partnership between researchers and civil society actors primarily in Canada, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon and Tanzania. He has been a researcher, practitioner and policy advisor on issues relating to the global refugee regime, global refugee policy and the politics of asylum in the global South. In recent years, he has undertaken field research in Burundi, Guinea, Kenya, India, Tanzania and Thailand, and has presented research findings to stakeholders in New York, Geneva, London, Ottawa, Bangkok, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and elsewhere. He has worked as a Consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in India, Cameroon, Guinea and its Geneva Headquarters. He is author of Refugees, the State and the Politics of Asylum in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), co-author (with Alexander Betts and Gil Loescher) of UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection (Routledge, 2012), and co-editor of Protracted Refugee Situations: Political, Human Rights and Security Implications (UN University Press, 2008).

Anne Balke Staver is a senior researcher at the Oslo Metropolitan University, focusing on migration and integration policies. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto and an MSc in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford. She is formerly a research fellow at the Institute for Social Research (Oslo), and has extensive experience from migration policymaking and implementation in the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration, Norwegian Police Immigration Service and the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Consultations on Migration, Asylum and Refugees (igc).

This speaker series is supported in part by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in the lead up to the 2019 International Metropolis Conference.

Description

Over the course of the long nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of tsarist subjects left the Russian empire and resettled in western and central Europe. There, they created new communities that they called “Russian colonies.” This talk reconstructs the utopian experiments that emerged in the “Russian colonies,” and examines how they influenced political imaginaries in Russia and in their European host societies. Providing a vivid portrait of a unique émigré milieu, the presentation also argues that the story of the colonies offers a novel perspective on one of the most classic themes in Russian history—the relationship between Russia and Europe.

Faith Hillis is associate professor of history at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Children of Rus’: Right Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation (Cornell University Press, 2013). The recipient of research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, ACLS, Columbia, and Harvard, she is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Description

In this paper, I draw on fieldwork in the Barakholka (in Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Kara-Suu bazaar (in southern Kyrgyzstan) to illustrate how these rent-generating institutions have localized patrimonialism through tumultuous renegotiations of property rights. Multiple narratives of ruination echo through this process: the bazaar as residue of a transition from communism; charred remains in the wake of bazaar fires; violent clashes between contenders vying for ownership and control.

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. My ongoing research explores emerging commercial configurations in greater Central Asia, such as regional bazaar trade. During 2018-2019, I am a Senior Researcher at CERES.

Description

A webinar of this event will be available shortly before the panel begins. 
Immigration to Canada has progressively changed the religious composition of the country, and stimulated a number of heated policy debates around questions of citizenship and belonging. Religious groups have also long been some of the most vocal advocates for family migration and refugee resettlement. At the same time, narratives of displacement, welcome, and belonging have largely ignored the experience and opinions of Indigenous populations.
This discussion will examine how religion and shaped migration and vice versa: How have faith groups influenced immigration patterns and policy? How is immigration changing religion in a secular Canadian society? And what do Indigenous experiences of displacement tell us about popular narratives of welcome?
Shachi Kurl:
“Migration’s Impact on Secularism in Canada” 
Geoffrey Cameron:
“Religion and the course of private refugee sponsorship in Canada”
Sadia Rafiquddan:
“Words Matter: Reframing the narrative of refugees, Indigenous peoples and Muslims in Canada” 
Discussant: Michael Donnelly, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
Shachi Kurl is Executive Director of the Angus Reid Institute. She is a frequent guest on CBC’s “At Issue,” Canada’s most-watched political panel, and her analysis has been published in The Globe and Mail, the National Post, and other influential forums.
Geoffrey Cameron (MPhil, PhD) is Director of Public Affairs for the Baha’i Community of Canada, a Research Associate with the Global Migration Lab, and he teaches at McMaster University. He is co-editing a forthcoming volume, “Private Refugee Sponsorship: Concepts, Cases, and Consequences”.
Born in Sargodha, Pakistan, Sadia Rafiquddin draws inspiration from her parents’ move to Canada as refugees in 1990. She is a freelance writer, broadcaster and photographer focusing on human rights stories for CBC, Ferst Digital Inc., Philanthropic Foundations Canada, Hacking Health and Apathy is Boring among others. Her radio documentary Engaged at 14:“I was worried about science class. And now I am getting married?” for CBC’s The Doc Project, was awarded two silver prizes at the New York Festival’s World’s Best Radio Programs in 2018.

Description

In the past decade, Europe has drifted in and out of crises. The Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, and the resurgence of the far right have shaken the confidence of some of the most committed defenders of the European political project. Germany has found itself at the center of many of these issues, and its presence has often reinvigorated long-harbored global anxieties about German political power. Germany’s past, however, can teach us a great deal about both the potential and the limits of this current continental search for political alternatives. This talk will offer a set of theses on the recent influx of minorities, the faltering of the European Union, and the gradual transformation of Germany’s political landscape, including the rise of a New Right.
Jennifer Allen is an assistant professor of modern German history at Yale University. She is working on a book titled Sustainable Utopias: Art, Political Culture, and Historical Practice in Late Twentieth-Century Germany, which charts Germany’s postwar efforts to revitalize the concept of utopia. She argues that, contrary to popular accounts, German interest in radical social alternatives had not diminished by the late twentieth century. Rather, Germans pursued the radical democratization of politics and culture through a series of modest grassroots projects. They not only envisioned a new German utopia but attempted to enact their vision, reclaiming utopian hope from the dustbin of historical ideas. In addition to the themes of utopia and anti-utopianism, Allen’s research explores the theories and practices of memory; counterculture and grassroots activism; and the politics of cultural preservation during and after the Cold War. Her work has been supported by the Volkswagen and Mellon Foundations; the American Academy in Berlin; the Institut für Zeitgeschichte; DAAD; the Institute for International, Comparative and Area Studies at UC San Diego; and the Institutes for European Studies and International Studies at UC Berkeley. Allen received her Ph.D. in history from UC Berkeley in 2015. She is currently the Berthold Leibinger Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and a visiting researcher at the Dahlem Humanities Center at the Free University in Berlin.
 

Description

Natalia Roudakova is a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D., Stanford University, 2007) working in the field of political communication and comparative media studies, with a broad interest in moral philosophy and political and cultural theory. She has worked as Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, University of California in San Diego, and as Visiting Scholar in the Media and Communication Department at Erasmus University in Rotterdam (Netherlands) and in the Department of Communication at Södertörn University, Stockholm (Sweden). In 2013-2014, Roudakova was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California, where she completed her book, titled Losing Pravda: Ethics and the Press in Post-Truth Russia which is now out with Cambridge University Press.

Losing Pravda examines the spectacular professional unraveling of journalism in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and its broader social and cultural effects. Roudakova argues that a crisis of journalism is unlike any other: it fundamentally erodes the value of truth-seeking and truth-telling in a society. In many ways, Roudakova tracks how a post-truth society comes into being. Russia’s case thus becomes far from unique, illuminating instead the historical and cultural emergence of phenomena such as “fake news,” misinformation (kompromat), and general distrust in politics and public life that have now begun to plague Western democracies as well. Roudakova’s account of one country’s loss of the culture of truth-seeking can serve as an important “wake-up call” for Western nations going forward.

Description

States in the North of Central America (NCA)– El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala – are characterized by endemic poverty, corruption, gang violence, criminality, sexual-identity and gender-based violence, and weak or repressive states. The situation has given rise to a major displacement crisis.

The region saw a tenfold increase in refugees and asylum-seekers from 2011 to 2016. Over 350,000 people claimed asylum globally from 2011 and 2017, with 130,500 in 2017 alone. Most made claims in Mexico and the US, but an increasing number sought refuge in Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama. In the first two months of 2019 alone, almost 8000 refugee claims were made in Mexico; the majority from Honduras and El Salvador. Women, families, and unaccompanied minors are over-represented in displaced populations.

Internal displacement is likewise significant. The region has the world’s most urbanized displaced population, with roughly 95% living in urban areas, making traditional, camp-based humanitarian assistance challenging.

Regional displacement has international implications. Between 400,000 and 500,000 NCA nationals cross irregularly into Mexico annually, most attempting to reach the US. Mexico has become a country of destination, and the new Mexican government has quickly put in place reception measures and enhanced access to the labour market for refugees.

To manage large displacements, states need to apply a comprehensive regional approach. UNHCR is supporting a state-led process known as the MIRPS – the Comprehensive Regional Protection and Solutions Framework – which seeks to promote mechanisms of responsibility-sharing for the prevention, protection and solutions of displaced populations.

This timely panel will offer an in-depth analysis of the current situation, examine the policies of the new government in Mexico, and ask what Canada can do to assist host states and displaced people.

Description

Artemi Troitsky is the leading Russian music journalist, radio host, producer, author and critic. He is the author of nine books on the history of Russian and Soviet music and youth culture, and he lectures widely around the world. Troitsky produces weekly shows for Radio Liberty and ARU.TV and regularly contributes to newspapers Novaya Gazeta, Postimees, and The Moscow Times. He is also a frequent contributor on Echo Moskvy, TV Dozhd, and BBC Russian Service.

Description

In her presentation, Prof. Velikanova discusses a new element in the historical picture explaining why politics shifted to mass repressions in 1937. Besides Stalin’s protracted conflict with regional party/state clans and the inflammatory role of new NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov, the dictator’s conceptualization of popular commentaries on the constitution and the results of the 1937 census could reverse his views on society and the hope that ordinary Soviets were sufficiently Sovietized. Together with international developments in the fall of 1936 that heightened Stalin’s fear of war, popular discussion of the constitution can provide the missing piece in the puzzle for why relative moderation ended and repressions expanded from former oppositionists to the officials and finally to the wider population.

Olga Velikanova is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas and a former alumna of CERES. She obtained her PhD from Saint Petersburg State university. She specializes in Soviet popular opinion studies and works extensively with declassified Communist party and secret police archives. She is author of five books discussing Soviet social mobilization campaigns and popular perceptions of Soviet politics and of Lenin’s image involving historical, anthropological and political culture methods. Her last book, Mass Political Culture under Stalinism: Popular Discussion of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Palgrave 2018) is the first full-length study of Stalin’s Constitution, exploring the government’s goals and Soviet citizens’ views of constitutional democratic principles and their problematic relationship with the reality of Stalinism.

Description

The documentary “Not in Our Name” is part of Central Asia’s First Regional Counter-Extremism Project, a research and documentary project developed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to help communities in Central Asia understand and prevent the spread of violence and extremism.

For more information and interviews with the team visit: https://pressroom.rferl.org/p/6831.htm

Q&A via Skype with Noah Tucker, Associate for the Central Asia Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. Senior Editor for Central Asia at RFE/RL.

Description

The fierce scholarly and practitioner debate on the question “did the United States promise not to enlarge NATO” has taken our attention away from an important policy problem and one newly released U.S. and Russian historical materials highlight very well: how do leaders manage tradeoffs and uncertainty? Pursuing one set of interests can harm the achievement of other interests. And sometimes, policies take a while to form, adding to uncertainty in relations among countries. American University Professor James Goldgeier will explain why Bill Clinton and his top advisers convinced themselves that they could both enlarge NATO and keep Russia on a Western-oriented track, despite Boris Yeltsin’s warnings to the contrary, and he will discuss the implications of their approach for U.S.-Russia relations today.

James Goldgeier is Visiting Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011-17. He holds the 2018-19 Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-Russia Relations at the John W. Kluge Center. Previously, he was a professor at George Washington University, where from 2001-05 he directed the Elliott School’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. He also taught at Cornell University, and has held a number of public policy appointments, including Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. In addition, he has held appointments or fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Hoover Institution, the Brookings Institution, and the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is past president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, and he co-directs the Bridging the Gap project, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He has authored or co-authored four books.

Description

In the first decade of the 16th century, the historian Kemālpashazāde (d. 1534) composed an elaborate History of the Ottoman Dynasty, in which he included a lengthy account of the pre-Ottoman past of the Balkans (Rumeli) based—after a thorough redaction—on an apocryphal Christian work of medieval Bulgarian history. By taking this peculiar case of convergence between Muslim and Christian historical narratives as a starting point and trying to locate it in its proper cultural and political contexts, this talk will embark on an attempt to tackle the wider issue of the make-up and dynamics of historical writing in a period of ideological experimentation in the nascent Ottoman imperial enterprise. It will explore the competitive nature of various historiographic strands originating in Rumeli and relating its history, as well as possible venues of interaction between them, in order to demonstrate how the consolidation of the dynasty’s authority in the region was paralleled by a process of appropriation of its past through the merger of these originally competing traditions.

Description

Ahead of the 2019 institutional reconfiguration of the EU is a fitting moment to take stock of the European integration process and decide which priorities should define the strategic agenda of the next generation of incumbents.

While acknowledging that the entire EU collective is concerned – member states and institutions alike – this report is addressed to the one actor that has a more direct role in fleshing out the policy agenda for Europe: the European Commission.

This report assesses how the ‘last chance Commission’ of President Juncker has fared; whether it has followed the ten guidelines it set out at the beginning of its mandate; how far it was blown off course by critical events; and whether we might see the return of a ‘political’ Commission in the second half of this year.

Against the backdrop of global trends and deepening divisions between member states and within the European Parliament, the contributors to this report distil key policy priorities in areas that will determine the future European Union, from the single market and the rule of law to migration, external security and climate change.

Thanks to its wide research coverage of EU policy and strong in-house expertise, CEPS is uniquely placed to comment on these issues and recommend action.

Description

Unlike the more notable elephant, whose sheer size is a marker of problems parties refuse to discuss, the Mavka hints at other kinds of silences in family histories and narratives about the past. The Mavka is a forest nymph, a girl or young woman that died tragically, but whose spirit lingers on in the forests of Eastern Europe. Her very existence is born not only of the trauma of an unnatural death, but also efforts to suppress the details of what happened to her.

On March 29, a panel of scholars across the disciplines of History and Slavic Languages and Literatures will discuss a range of silences that affect scholarship on the region as well as personal and familial accounts of the past. We will discuss why gender has been muted or is absent in studies of the artistic avantgarde and the nationalist underground during WWII and the implications of integrating those perspective into histories of the region. Viewing East European, Russian, and Soviet history as a family drama, we also consider how violence and trauma over the centuries has shaped what is said and what remains unsaid. Additionally, panelists will reflect on conceptual, practical and methodological hurdles facing scholars aiming to address these silences and restore agency to voices that remain unheard. Chief among them will be the silences facing the researcher—personal and professional reasons for pursuing one research agenda over another. We will also discuss how to broach topics that remain taboo, how to deal with historical figures that are unsympathetic and those we might love too much, and how to address questions that make us uncomfortable, both individually and collectively.

Speakers:

Orysia Kulick (Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Toronto)
Markian Dobczansky (Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Ukrainian Studies, Columbia University)
Oksana Dudko (PhD Candidate, History Department/Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto)
Mayhill Fowler (Assistant Professor of History, Stetson University)
Anna Muller (Assistant Professor of History; The Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies, University of MIchigan-Dearborn)
Dragana Obradovic (Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto)

Discussants:
Alison K. Smith (Professor and Chair, Department of History, University of Toronto)
Lynne Viola (Professor, Department of History, University of Toronto)

Description

On 1 October 1791, the French Legislative Assembly convened in Paris, initiating the constitutional regime that revolutionaries in 1789 had committed themselves to establish. Within a year, however, the monarchy had been overthrown, and the Constitution of 1791 had collapsed. In explaining the French Revolution’s transition during this period from a moderate to a more radical phase, historians have emphasized factors such as the importance of the Flight to Varennes, the rise of the popular movement, and the dynamic of revolutionary discourse. Such explanations have tended to dismiss support for the constitutional regime on the eve of its demise as marginal, insincere, or irrelevant. Yet the advent of republican democracy in France should not completely eclipse the significance of the constitutional monarchy’s failure. This paper suggests that debate within the Legislative Assembly reveals not conflict between republicans and royalists, but a more nuanced struggle between differing conceptions of the revolution, the location of national sovereignty, and the importance of a written constitution. For example, the opposition of some deputies to the declaration of war against Austria on 20 April 1792 reflected determination to defend the constitution and the liberal principles it embodied. Beyond the Assembly, the paper also examines the departmental denunciations of the Paris crowd’s invasion of the Tuileries Palace on 20 June 1792. These addresses and petitions went beyond manifestations of loyalty to Louis XVI to express commitment to the ideal of constitutionalism. Thus this paper argues that there were many in France who still hoped to defend the liberal revolution of 1789, with its promise of individual liberty, property rights, and the rule of law, on the eve of a second revolution which would sweep away the Constitution of 1791.

Bill Cormack received his Ph.D. from Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario in 1992. In 1995, Cambridge University Press published his first book, Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy 1789-1794. Since 1998, he has been a member of the Department of History at the University of Guelph in Ontario, where he teaches modern European history. His new book, Patriots, Royalists, and Terrorists in the West Indies: The French Revolution in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1789-1802, comes out with the University of Toronto Press in January 2019. His current research concerns the French Legislative Assembly and the demise of the Constitution of 1791.

Description

A webinar of this event will be available shortly before the panel begins. 
While the concept of sanctuary cities ancient, it has taken on new importance along with the politicization and securitization of migration.
In the US, local sanctuary policies and social movements can play an important role in defending undocumented people. This is particularly important given schisms between city, state, and federal policy, and the proportion of undocumented people with partners, spouses, and children with US citizenship. Sanctuary policies can also play an important role in ensuring that undocumented people can access healthcare and social services, and feel safe to report crimes, unfair labour practices, and domestic abuse.
At the same time, sanctuary policies can serve as a point of backlash from law enforcement agencies, immigration authorities, and often first and second-generation immigrant communities. 
This panel will unpack the role of sanctuary movements in the US context, and compare them with policies in Canada, where the role of immigration enforcement and undocumented populations is far less politicized from either end of the spectrum. The panel brings together practitioner and academic perspectives, in conversation with policymakers from the City of Toronto.
Alexandra Délano Alonso: “The Limits and Possibilities of Sanctuary: Modes of Resistance and Solidarity in the Trump era”
Idil Atak: “Toronto’s Sanctuary City Policy: Rationale and Barriers”
Ritika Goel: ““No Sanctuary Without Health: Uninsured in Canada”
In conversation with Chris Brillinger, Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration at City of Toronto
Idil Atak is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Criminology at Ryerson University. She received her Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Law. She was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the McGill Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism. Idil is the Editor-In-Chief of International Journal of Migration and Border Studies (IJMBS). She is a member of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration’s (IASFM) Executive Committee, the past president of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS), and a research associate at Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law (McGill University). 
Her research interests include irregular migration, refugee protection, and international and European human rights law. She is currently conducting a SSHRC-funded research on the intersection of security, irregular migration and asylum, along with Professors Graham Hudson (Ryerson University) and Delphine Nakache (University of Ottawa). Idil served as a legal expert for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara, then as deputy to the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
Alexandra Délano Alonso is Associate Professor and Chair of Global Studies at The New School and the current holder of the Eugene M. Lang Professorship for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring. She received her doctorate in International Relations from the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on diaspora policies, the transnational relationships between states and migrants, sanctuary, and the politics of memory in relation to borders, violence and migration. She is a faculty fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility and a member of the Sanctuary Working Group at The New School.
She is the author of From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration and Social Rights beyond Borders (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her book Mexico and Its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of Emigration since 1848 (Cambridge University Press, 2011) was the co-winner of the William LeoGrande Prize for the best book on US-Latin America Relations and was published in Spanish by El Colegio de México in 2014. Recent publications include the special issue “Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics” (co-editor and co-author with Harris Mylonas, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2018) and “Borders and the Politics of Mourning” (co-editor and co-author with Benjamin Nienass, Social Research, Summer 2016).
Dr. Ritika Goel is a family physician and activist in Toronto. She works with migrants with precarious immigration status, and people experiencing homelessness and poverty, at Queen West Community Health Centre and the Inner City Health Associates. Ritika has been involved with various social justice issues such as working for access to healthcare for uninsured migrants, defending our public healthcare system, and upstream policy change on the social determinants of health. She is Chair of the Social Accountability Working Group at the College of Family Physicians of Canada, a Board Member of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and a founding member of the OHIP for All campaign. If you’re interested in learning more about the intersections of social justice, politics and health, you can follow her on Twitter @RitikaGoelTO.”
Chris Brillinger is the Executive Director of the Social Development, Finance & Administration Division, responsible for Social Policy & Research, Community Resources and Financial and Administrative oversight and support for the City’s human services cluster.
An Urban Planner by training, Chris has held a variety of positions in a number of non-governmental organizations prior to joining local government. Several of Chris’s; most recent achievements include the development of the Toronto Seniors Strategy, Toronto Newcomer Strategy, Toronto Youth Equity Strategy, Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy 2020 recommending a new set of priority neighbourhoods for the City of Toronto, TO Prosperity, the poverty reduction strategy for the City of Toronto, and Tenants First: A Way Forward for Toronto Community Housing and Social Housing in Toronto.

Description

Europe’s Southern and Eastern neighbourhoods have changed considerably during the past few years, and the key words describing the regional security environment are fluidity, instability and unpredictability. Furthermore, there is a general failure of governance as the Eastern Mediterranean and its adjoining regions remain an extremely turbulent and unstable neighbourhood and the security environment continues to be ‘Hobbesian’.

Greek security policy makers will function for the foreseeable future under the Damocles sword of the country’s economic limitations, which is imposing a number of serious constraints and limitations. As key organizations such as the EU and NATO are evolving in an effort to adapt to new global, regional and domestic trends, Greece needs to find its own niche in the distribution of regional roles and influence and convince its partners and allies of its own added value in managing common security challenges. A difficult task, indeed, for a country with limited resources, but the alternative is strategic marginalization and inability to protect its vital national interests.

Thanos Dokos is the Director-General of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), a think tank based in Athens, which conducts policy-oriented research on European and regional developments. He has been working on issues of European and regional security in the Mediterranean/Middle East, as well as parts of the former Soviet space, for more than 20 years. For research purposes he is using a broad definition of security, including both hard and soft security dimensions. His current work focuses on global and regional trends and the policy challenges for international organizations and regional stakeholders in the Mediterranean. He has a B.A in International Studies: Webster University (in Geneva), and MSc in International Relations, University of Southampton, and M.Phil in International Relations, University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D in International & Strategic Studies, University of Cambridge.

Description

Dr. Hila Zahavi (Ph.D., Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) is the Director of the Simone Veil Research Centre for Contemporary European Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Dr. Zahavi leads the European Commission funded “Near-EU Jean Monnet Research Network.” She also serves as a member of the core committee of COST action “CA17119 – EU Foreign Policy Facing New Realities: Perceptions, Contestation, Communication and Relations.” Recently Dr. Zahavi co-edited a Special Issue of the European Journal of Higher Education titled “Twenty Years of the Bologna Process – Reflecting on its Global Strategy from the Perspective of Motivations and External Responses” (2019). Her Ph.D. research (completed in August 2018) dealt with higher education as a tool in foreign policy. Her research interests focus on higher education policies from a political perspective, the political dimensions of the Union’s foreign and security policy, and Israeli-European Union relations. Since 2015, Dr. Zahavi teaches different courses on the European integration process in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Description

There is evidence that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has indefinitely and arbitrarily detained as many as 800,000 to 2 million of its Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz citizens in mass internment camps where they are subjected to great psychological and physical duress. Coupled with the establishment of a dystopian surveillance state throughout the Uyghur region of China, these camps appear to represent a concerted state-led effort to transform the identity and culture of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. This talk will discuss this issue with particular reference to how the present situation has emerged from an intersection of China’s Neo-colonial policies towards its Turkic minorities with the Islamophobic ideologies of the global war on terror.

Description

When Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev resigned from the office of the presidency in March 2019, it surprised observers and Kazakhstanis alike. Was this a new form of “authoritarian succession” that others in Eurasia might emulate? Would Kazakhstan’s role in the region shift? What were the prospects for dynastic succession? In this roundtable, we explore what a dictator’s resignation might mean.

Description

This event is free and open to the public. 
Event: 4 pm to 6 pm with a reception at 3 pm 
The Jews of Hungary, Germany’s ally, were the last to be pulled into the Nazi machinery of murder. But in the summer of 1944, Adolf Eichmann and his team, working together with Hungarian police, rounded up 450,000 Jews and transported them to Auschwitz to be killed.
Our speakers reflect on the devastation of the Holocaust in Hungary and its ongoing significance, 75 years later. Livia Prince is a survivor of Auschwitz and an alumna of U of T (BA Classics, 1979). Ferenc Lazcó, a historian from Maastricht University, is the author of Hungarian Jews in the Age of Genocide: An Intellectual History, 1929-1948. Judith Szapor, a historian of modern Europe from McGill University, is the author of Hungarian Women’s Activism in the Wake of the First World War: From Rights to Revanche.
This event is presented by the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair in Holocaust Studies in partnership with the Faculty of Arts & Science; the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies; the Elizabeth and Tony Comper Holocaust Education Fund; the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies (funded by the DAAD with funds from the German Federal Foreign Office); the Hungarian Studies Program at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy; and the Department of History.

Description

What has changed and remained the same in Ukrainian politics after the Euromaidan revolution? Definitely, the Ukrainian political system has become more democratic, transparent, and competitive. At the same time, the patrimonial nature and organizing principles of the political system remain the same. Surprisingly, after the Euromaidan revolution, Ukraine’s patrimonial politics are paradoxically contributing to the institutionalization of political pluralism and political competition, via a series of formal and informal power-sharing arrangements between the major Euromaidan players. In my presentation, I try to examine the decisive role of informal politics and shadow patron-client networks in Ukraine that remain an under-researched topic for a long time and demonstrate how a neopatrimonial democracy in which state capture is the primary gain, unexpectedly stimulates competitive politics.

Dr. Oleksandr Fisun is Professor of Political Science and Department Chair at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine. His primary research interests are Ukrainian politics and comparative democratization. He has held visiting fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy (Washington, DC), the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington (Seattle), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), and the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is the author of Demokratiia, neopatrimonializm i global’nye transformatsii [Democracy, Neopatrimonialism, and Global Transformations] (Kharkiv, 2006), as well as numerous book chapters and articles on regime change, informal politics, and neopatrimonialism in Ukraine.

Description

A webinar of this event will be available shortly before the panel begins. 
Irregular migration represents a tiny fraction of overall global mobility. Most irregular migrants overstay visas or lose legal status rather than attempt to cross borders on foot or arrive at shores by boat. Among these, a significant proportion have legitimate claims to asylum.
Nonetheless, irregular migration over borders plays a disproportionate role in political discourse, and politicians in liberal states have embarked on progressively more restrictive policies to close borders, detain migrants, and extend controls to transit and host states. These policies can have far-ranging effects, including more lethal migration routes, larger markets for smugglers and traffickers, undermining liberal international norms, and fostering hysterical domestic responses to irregular migration.
The final event in our Global Migration Challenges series will look at the effects of EU attempts to externalize migration controls in West Africa, unpack the Trump administration’s policies of deterrence, detention, and family separation, and present evidence about how changes in US policy affect irregular migration to Canada.
Philippe M. Frowd: “Playing the numbers game in Europe’s African borderlands”
Luis Campos: “Broken Borders and Broken Promises: An Update on U.S. Asylum Law and Policy and the Legal Resistance at the American Southern Border”
Craig Damian Smith: “America First, Canada Last? The Effects of US Policy Change on Emerging Irregular Migration Systems to Canada”
In conversation with Prof. Alison Mountz, Director, International Migration Research Centre and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University
Luis Campos is Immigration Counsel to Haynes and Boone LLP in Dallas, Texas and a former Assistant Professor of Law at the University of New Brunswick. Dr. Campos has led Haynes and Boone’s pro bono program of representing Central American asylum seekers affected by the government’s Zero Tolerance Policy. In this role, he coordinates the firm’s deportation defense teams; frequently visits immigration detention facilities throughout the Southwest; and appears in related federal court proceedings. Dr. Campos received his legal education in the U.S. and Canada (J.D., SMU; M.A., U Texas; LL.M. and S.J.D., U Toronto).
Philippe M. Frowd is Assistant Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. His research focuses on the politics of border security and migration management, with a particular focus on transnational security relationships in the Sahel. His bookSecurity at the Borders (Cambridge, 2018)draws on research in Mauritania and Senegal to examine the new practices and technologies that shape borderwork in the region. Philippe’s work has appeared in diverse venues including Security Dialogue, International Political Sociology, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
Craig Damian Smith is the Associate Director of the Global Migration Lab. His research focuses on migration, displacement, European foreign policy, and refugee integration. His current SSHRC-funded research looks at the emergence of irregular migration systems to Canada and their effects on Canada’s domestic politics and international migration relations. He consults on refugee integration policies in EU Member states, and has made several appearances before the Canadian House of Commons Citizenship and Immigration Committee. In addition to his scholarly work, he has provided media commentary on migration and refugee issues to outlets including the Globe and Mail, National Post, BBC, CBC, and NBC.
Alison Mountz is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Laurier University. Her work explores how people cross borders and access migration and asylum policies. She researches the tension between the decisions, desires, and displacements that drive migration and the policies and practices designed to manage migration. She analyzes geographies of political asylum and detention, including recent research on islands and US war resister migration to Canada, asking how people seek, find, and forge safe haven. Her monograph, Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border (Minnesota), was awarded the Meridian Book Prize from the Association of American Geographers. She recently published Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States (California, with Jenna Loyd). Mountz directs Laurier’s International Migration Research Centre and edits the journal Politics & Space. She was the 2015-2016 Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University and is a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada.

Description

In the early summer of 1940, when France was overrun by German troops, one junior general who had fought in the trenches in Verdun refused to accept defeat. He fled to London, where he took to the radio to address his compatriots back home. “Whatever happens,” he said, “the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.” At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered history.

For the rest of the war, de Gaulle insisted he and his Free French movement were the true embodiment of France. Through sheer force of personality he inspired French men and women to risk their lives to resist the Nazi occupation. Sometimes aloof but confident in his leadership, he quarreled violently with Churchill and Roosevelt. Yet they knew they would need his help to rebuild a shattered Europe. Thanks to de Gaulle, France was recognized as one of the victorious Allies when Germany was finally defeated. Then, as President of the Fifth Republic, he brought France to the brink of a civil war over his controversial decision to pull out of Algeria. He challenged American hegemony, took France out of NATO, and twice vetoed British entry into the European Community in his pursuit of what he called “a certain idea of France.”

Julian Jackson’s magnificent De Gaulle, the first major biography in over twenty years, captures this titanic figure as never before. Drawing on the extensive resources of the recently opened de Gaulle archives, Jackson reveals the conservative roots of de Gaulle’s intellectual formation, sheds new light on his relationship with Churchill, and shows how he confronted riots at home and violent independence movements from the Middle East to Vietnam. No previous biography has so vividly depicted this towering figure whose legacy remains deeply contested.

De Gaulle has been recognized with the Amercian Library in Paris Prize 2018 for the best book about France written in English, the Franco-British Literary Prize 2018, and the prestigious Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction 2018. It is being translated into French, Portugese, Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese and was noted a ‘book of the year’ by several British newspapers.

Description

On 27 July 1794 – 9 Thermidor year II in the new Revolutionary Calendar – Maximilien Robespierre, the most notorious politician of the French revolution, was toppled from his position on the Committee of Public safety which was running the Terror in France. He was executed the followjng evening. His overthrow is conventionally viewed as marking the beginning of the end of the Terror. Events on 9 Thermidor started with a parliamentary coup in the national assembly led by many of his colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety. It was followed by a mobilisation of the Parisian popular movement in support of Robespierre led by the Paris Commune, before the national assembly reorganised and won the day. Many historians have seen the ootcome of the day as inevitable. Yet for those who were caught up in it, it was anything but. The forces behind Robespierre looked superior to those of his opponents and the outcome of the action wavered dramatically over the 24 hours. It was a day that involved tens of thousands of Parisians. How, then, does one tell the story of those 24 hours, in ways which do justice to the experience of those Parisians and the forces of sheer contingency and chance?

Colin Jones is Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London and since 2018 is also Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. He is Fellow of the British Academy and Past President of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of many books on the history of France including The Great Nation. France from Louis XIV to Napoleon (1715-99) (2002), Paris: Biography of a City (2004), The Smile Revolution in 18th-century Paris (2015) and Versailles (2018).

Description

In the 1970s, the French lawyer Jean-Jacques de Félice served as defense counsel for Cléophas Kamitatu-Massamba of Congo-Zaïre, who was expelled from France in 1972 even though he had obtained political refugee status. At the request of Mobutu Sese Seko, the French Minister of the Interior had censored Kamitatu’s critical portrayal of the Mobutu regime, La Grande Mystification du Congo (published by François Maspero Press in 1970). The Kamitatu case illustrates how, even as France ratified the 1967 Protocol of the Geneva Convention on Refugees in 1971, immigration, censorship, and late Gaullist era Africa policies dominated political discussions. The attempts to censure Kamitatu’s book published by a French publisher and to deport him despite his status as political refugee show how various facets of French government engaged with international laws regulating refugees and deportation at the very time that Jacques Foccart, who had oriented France’s Africa policy since 1958, sought to integrate Congo-Zaïre into France’s sphere of influence in Africa. Kamitatu’s story thus exposes the network of Jacques Foccart as detrimental to French civil liberties, African opposition politics, and international refugee protocols alike. The chapter draws primarily on Kamitatu’s legal case files in the archives of his lawyer, Jean-Jacques de Félice. It places cause lawyering in historical perspective, promotes use of the lawyer’s archive as fertile historical method, and considers state and non-state actor networks in a common analytical framework.

Meredith Terretta earned her PhD in African history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds the Gordon F. Henderson Research Chair in Human Rights and teaches history at the University of Ottawa. She specializes in themes of African liberation movements, legal activism, histories of refuge-seeking, and human rights. She has recently coedited African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights (Ohio University Press, 2015). Her most recent single-authored book is Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State-Building in Cameroon (Ohio University Press, New African Histories Series, 2014). Her articles appear in numerous journals including The Journal of Contemporary History, The Canadian Journal of History, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, Politique africaine, The Journal of World History, Human Rights Quarterly, and The Journal of African History. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled Activism at the Fringes of Empire: Rogue Lawyers and Rights Activists In and Out of Twentieth Century Africa. She is President of the Canadian Association of African Studies.

Description

Oleksii Polegkyi is a Bayduza Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and member of Political Communication Research Unit at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Previously he was a research fellow at the Graduate Institute of Russian Studies, National Chengchi University, Taiwan and visiting post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg in Hungary. He earned PhD in Political Sciences from the University of Wroclaw, Poland and the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He received an MA in Philosophy from the T. Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine and was a recipient of the Taiwan Fellowship Program, Lane Kirkland Fellowship, Open Society Foundation Fellowship as well as research grants from Polish National Science Centre, Erste Foundation and others. His research interests include post-communist transformations in post-Soviet area, media and political discourse in Ukraine, foreign policy, nation and identity building in the post-Soviet states.