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Paper short abstract:

The Spanish state uses the discourses of Christian-Muslim fraternity to patronise Muslim communities. This strategy was first deployed by Spanish colonial governments, but this is now forgotten. This paper explores how amnesia recasts uncanny apprehensions of domination into conspiracy.

Paper long abstract:

The Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews that inhabit the Spanish enclave of Ceuta insist that they live together in harmonious convivencia. Ceuta’s calendar is full of jovial occasions where ethno-religious groups participate in each other’s sacred rites. It is moot that convivencia was single-handedly forged by Mayor-President Vivas; his visionary charisma quelled religious animosities and turned Ceuta into a “melting pot” whose “fraternal” ingredients are all “equally Spanish”. Though lacking hard evidence, many Muslims suspect that “convivencia” is a ploy to hide socio-economic inequality, trivialise religion as “folklore”, and divide Muslim communities as they scramble for governmental patronage. These voices are dismissed as paranoid and conspiratorial. However, Spain has a long (locally forgotten) history of using "convivencia" to control subaltern populations. While turn-of-the-century historians fought against the orientalisation of Spain, the state used the supposed “fraternity” between Moor and Spaniard to justify the conquest of northern Morocco. In the name of inter-religious solidarity, colonial governors sponsored sympathetic Muslim leaders, lavishly funding temples and rituals. Convivencia combined flattery, fascination and patronage into a cocktail of domination, which is now fed co-citizens. This paper examines what happens when such continuities are forgotten. Convivencia then becomes the genius project of one individual. The focus on charisma obstructs the inherited, implicit expectations about state power, religion, identity and public space that inform convivencia. Aside from misdirecting resistance, amnesia reduces contemporary complaints about convivencia to incoherent conspiratorial ramblings uttered by subaltern populations unable or unwilling to integrate into Spanish ideas of citizenship and state power.

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Paper short abstract:

The  Régiment du Service Militaire Adapté, or RSMA, is an educational military program tailor-made for the  struggling young indigenous population of the French overseas dependencies. As agents of change, French soldiers are today materially (co-)shaping Polynesians’ futures and aspirations.

Paper long abstract:

Originally designed in 1961 to domesticate the population of the French Antilles en masse, the  Régiment du Service Militaire Adapté, or RSMA, is an educational military program tailor-made for the  struggling young indigenous population. The program was initially created following the tensions  that shook the Antilles in 1959, and out of fear that the revolt would degenerate into a war of independence as had happened in Algeria in those same years. The RSMA exists today in all  French overseas territories and dependencies, and in French Polynesia, an overseas  collectivity in the Pacific region, the first RSMA branch was opened in 1989 in the Marquesas  Islands. As agents of change, French soldiers are today materially (co-)shaping Polynesians’ futures and aspirations. The almost stereotyped figure of the French soldier as an agent of modernity, dating back to the nuclear testing, is reimagined as an educator.

The fading military presence in  the Pacific notwithstanding, France is still symbolically and materially very present in French  Polynesia, developing new forms of soft power through the militarization of civilian tasks, as the  example of the RSMA demonstrates. This form of power is exerted through cultural and economic influences, often subtle and  invisible, exercised by the French government to maintain these Polynesian  islands under French hegemony. Notwithstanding their paternalistic role in which so easily they could fit as “modern colonizers”, I argue that the intimacies that take place inside the RSMA, and the surrounding communities, is uncannily perceived as the “best opportunity” for the Polynesian youth.

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Paper short abstract:

By drawing on recent literature on the ‘Black Mediterranean’ as well as my own fieldwork into refugee and migrant disappearances, this paper examines the colonial history of the various present day coercive measures used in the Mediterranean region to deter Europe-bound migrations.

Paper long abstract:

Strategies, technologies, and measures employed to deter Europe-bound migrations through the Mediterranean region have multiplied, intensified, and become increasingly sophisticated over the course of the past two decades. However, behind the technological sophistication of thermal cameras, heartbeat sensors, drones, triple-fencing, and modern patrol boats lie practices and logics of mobility curtailment which can be traced back to Europe’s colonial conquest and domination. Colonial expansion entailed not just slave trade, but also other forms of enforced curtailment of mobility—as well as enforced mobility, such as the case of forced convict labour. Furthermore, for example in the British colonies, the abolition of slavery did not bring an end to these practices but, instead, they were carried on as expanded laws on ‘vagrancy’.

A lot of important recent work done on border regimes and migration have rightly highlighted the interconnections between borders, bordering practices, and racial capitalism. In this paper, however, I seek to historicise these developments further and argue, drawing on literature on the ‘Black Mediterranean’ and on my work on refugee and migrant disappearances and border deaths, that the control of ‘suspect’ populations now eagerly embraced across Europe draw their acceptability from their long colonial legacy. Furthermore, in contrast to literature on ‘governmentality’ I propose to examine the unabashed necropolitical brutality and coercion, in other words, direct use of force, involved in such anti-migration projects.

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Paper short abstract:

In Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, refugee political activists who engage in ‘home’ countries’ politics risk enforced disappearance. The tactic of enforced disappearances is of colonial origin but continues to be used to control and manage displaced populations within Kenya.

Paper long abstract:

In Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, refugees are prohibited from participating in their ‘home’ countries’ politics by the camp's managerial bodies, the UNHCR and the Kenyan Refugee Affairs Secretariat. Refugees that engage in politics risk enforced disappearance by the Kenyan Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The tactic of enforced disappearances was introduced to Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising (1952-60) by the British Army officer Frank Kitson. While serving in the Colonial Kenyan CID, Kitson developed the concept of ‘Low Intensity Operations’ (1971), where counter-insurgency units utilised enforced disappearances to quell dissent. Combined with the villagization and biometric registration of colonial subjects, the potent impact of enforced disappearances was amplified. Based on twelve months of ethnographic research in Kakuma and Kalobeyei, this paper examines the continuity and transformations of colonial state practices used to control and manage encamped refugees. By tracing the colonial tactics which enable enforced disappearances within Kenya, I critically examine the effect disappearances have on refugee political communities (Huttunen, 2016) and their understandings of the state (Krupa & Nugent, 2015). I argue that enforced disappearances of political actors produce an effect that shapes an understanding of the state, while simultaneously changing the organisation of political communities. Political activists and agitators resist the effect of enforced disappearances by operating in spaces not considered political by the camp authorities, such as churches and Sufi lodges. Within these religious spaces, political actors reconstruct understandings of the Kenyan state, but also their respective ‘home’ countries’ states.