We’re delighted to announce that Dr Debbie Lisle, Reader at Queen’s University Belfast and author of Holidays in the Danger Zone: Entanglements of War and Tourism (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), will be the keynote speaker at ‘Governing (In)securities’, University of York, 4 July.
Crisis in Slow Motion: the Stubborn Habits of Migration
This paper contests the temporal ordering of crisis and emergency that framed EU migration during the summer of 2015 and continues to shape official responses to the supposed ‘weakening’ of Europe’s borders. Focusing specifically on arrival and reception experiences on the Greek island of Kos, this paper thinks with and alongside the encounters that are occluded by dominant crisis-framings in government, policy, media and activist circles.
It begins by exploring the mundane actions, daily habits and embodied rhythms of simply getting on in the midst of a crisis – the stubborn and often indifferent acts of living, persisting and moving despite the claim of emergency. Of particular interest here are the everyday human / non-human relations that persist in repetitive acts of daily living (e.g. washing, eating, playing) as well as the complex relationships that people on the move have with objects (e.g. backpacks, smartphones).
Focusing on these embodied and material relations is one way to visualize not only the rich, vibrant agencies that persist in and through moments of crisis, but also the non-spectacular moments of solidarity, care and circulation that contest dominant modes of abjection and rescue.
