S.A. Smythe: Colonial Technologies of Migrant Dispossession across the Mediterranean
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Lecture Series FORCED MIGRATION
9 December 2026, 4:15-5:45 pm CET
online
S.A. Smythe (University of Toronto)
Colonial Technologies of Migrant Dispossession across the Mediterranean [EN]
This lecture approaches the Black Mediterranean as a way of situating contemporary forced migration and imperial border governance within longer histories of colonialism and racial capitalism. More broadly, it discusses work on the technocultural and aesthetic conditions through which displacement, mobility, and belonging are made legible and governable across Frontex Europe and its externalised borders. Ceuta, Tripoli, Lampedusa, and possibly Calais will be examined as interrelated contemporary sites where these processes become particularly visible and deadly, while also attending to forms of resistance and relation that emerge against and beyond them.
SA Smythe is a critical theorist, transmedia storyteller, and educator committed to black belonging beyond genres and geographies. They are associate professor of Black Studies & the Archive and Director of the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis at the University of Toronto.
Please register here once for all online events in the ‘Forced Migration’ lecture series:
https://forms.europa-uni.de/form/alias/EUV/forced-migration-lecture-series/
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FORCED MIGRATION – Lecture Series, Winter Semester 2026/2027
The lecture series is organised within the framework of B/ORDERS IN MOTION and brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on forced migration, borders, asylum, and refugee reception. It examines how experiences of displacement are shaped by immigration and asylum regimes, legal insecurity, racialisation, gendered and intersectional inequalities, and changing infrastructures of border control and reception.
Combining theoretical debate with empirical research and perspectives from policy, activism, and practice, the series addresses border externalisation and violence, differentiated forms of vulnerability and protection, refugee agency and collective action, and the everyday negotiation of institutional constraints. It also considers questions of local reception, participation, and support, connecting wider debates on European migration governance with experiences and practices in specific national and local contexts.