Underskog

News reports about migrants increasingly focus on their mobility as a transgression of European immigration management and a threat to local populations. Not only are they crossing borders, they are also seen as challenging European citizens right to work and welfare. It is in particular irregular migrants, often referred to as illegals in news reports that seem to cause most moral indignation.

In today’s event we will discuss irregular migration, but from the point of departure of the documentary “Europe or Die Trying”. It is one of three parts of the BBC Panorama series “Migrants, Go Home!” where reporter Paul Kenyon explores controversial questions in European immigration control. The control of “Europe’s external borders”, as Kenyon illustrates, among others involves a highly questionable collaboration between Libya and Italy both to stop boats crossing the Mediterranean and detention centres for migrants in Libya itself.

The film is 30 min long and Kenyon himself will be present during the event. The panel will discuss the representation of irregular migrants and their routes in European media: how come people engage in high-risk activities to achieve mobility? What are the human rights of irregulars? And what are the responsibilities of European states towards irregular migrants? Yet, there is also a tendency to describe migrants as victims without agency, but is this an appropriate way to describe them?