About

Moderatio: Joana Sousa Ribeiro (CES) | Commentator: Vâlmor Scott Junior (Universidade Federal de Pelotas)


About

In this seminar, stemming from an ongoing research, I will reflect on the colonial construction of the figure of the refugee, whose recognition is based on a technical assessment of protection needs. In this sense, I argue that the asylum procedure, a mechanism harmonised at the European level and which allows for the granting of Refugee Status (or other subsidiary protection), constitutes a colonial mechanism that translates the reality of the person seeking protection into the language and terms of protection defined in the West.

The metaphor of the abyssal line will be mobilised in this reflection to show how the figure of the refugee operates as a functional tool of the structure which defines a zone of "rights" and a zone of "absence of rights", a zone of "existence" and a zone of "non-existence".
In the same line, I will also address how Refugee Status is more easily attributed to certain groups compared to others. Thus, inequalities are based on colonial continuities and are technically produced, structured and perpetuated within hegemonic humanitarianism.

Thematic Index to be addressed

• How the definition of refugee emerges
• The procedure of expansion and recognition
• The modern and evaluative gaze, proof of the merit of protection
• The figure of the refugee and the abyssal line

Bio note

Ivana Belén Ruiz Estramil has a degree in Sociology from the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea UPV/EHU, a Master in Models and Research Areas in Social Sciences from the same university, and a PhD in Sociology from the Public University of Navarra. Her lines of research include asylum and refuge, International Humanitarian Law, humanitarianism and international relations. She has carried out research stays at the Centre for Social Studies (CES-University of Coimbra-Portugal, in 2015), and at the Department of Anthropology of the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia, in 2017), the latter with the support of EGONLABUR 2016 scholarship, granted by the Basque Government/Eusko Jaurlaritza. Estramil has presented scientific papers at the Spanish Universities of Andalusia, Madrid, Barcelona, Basque Country, and internationally as in Portugal, Colombia or Uruguay. She has published articles in several academic journals and other informative formats

Seminar organised by Sara Araújo, as part of the activities of the Doctoral Programme Sociology of State Law and Justice, the Epistemologies of the South  and of the Working Group ITM - Inter-Thematic group on Migrations