Speakers on “Panel 6: State Interventions & Spatial Imaginaries” will be presenting their work from 2:20–3:35pm in Allard 122.
Abolfazl (Abu) Fakhri (PhD, SFU), Governing through precarity: Afghan ‘irregular’ migrants in Iranian and Turkish migration and labour regimes
There is a growing population of Afghan ‘irregular’ migrants in Turkey who are ‘illegalized’, pushed to work in the informal sector with no basic rights, and exposed to exploitation and deportation. Similarly, Afghan migrants in Iran have been deprived of any protection or rights, hyper-exploited doing menial jobs for decades.
In this paper, I draw on bourgeoning literature in critical precarity and migration scholarships that shows how migrants are made precarious by states through a nexus of migration management and neoliberal labour regimes. Based on analysis of academic research, policy documents, and empirical reports on the condition of Afghan migrants in Turkey and Iran, I argue that such production of ‘illegality’ and precarity is not only due to flaws in Islamic Republic and Turkish migration systems. Rather, it is a specific entanglement of Iranian and Turkish border control, institutional indeterminacy and barriers in migration bureaucratic procedures, and ‘illegalization’ through which ‘irregular’ migrants are constantly confined, circulated, and channelled between and within these countries producing exploitable and manageable migrant bodies. I further contend that the Iranian and Turkish modes of migration governance have developed and work in tandem with an uneasy mixture of political Islam, nationalism, and neoliberalism.
This paper contributes to the development of a robust literature that moves away from another ‘refugee crisis’ narrative where the historical and political origin of the Afghan predicament is obfuscated. In this line, it offers new insights into the complex nature of migration governance, state power, and neoliberalism in the Middle East.
Zahra Khan (BA, Kwantlen), Benefitting the Beneficiary: successes and failures of the European Neighbourhood Policy, and hope for democratic reform in the MENA region
This paper posits an improved approach to democratic reform in MENA nations, through a study of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and its work with these partners. Under the aegis of established democratic custom in agreement with each partner, the policy can be examined for its “actions on the ground” as a determiner of its success, relevant to the policy’s goal to foster a positive transformation to economic, trade and human rights concern in the region.
Legitimate and perceived ideas of a democratic good drive EU actors — this paper reviews literature on the response of each MENA performer to these provisions, and whether the policy acts according to the needs of each, based on what EU and MENA actors stand to gain. Through comparison to the European Commission’s March 2015 review of the policy’s scope, a top-down approach as dictated by legislative bodies in the union is seen here to work from a conception of the EU as a beneficiary to the region. The success of the policy in work with each MENA actor is studied for factors of differentiation, focus, flexibility, ownership and visibility according to the Commission’s 2015 review, as determiners for “democratic sovereignty.” The paper concludes by deconstructing current Integrational strategies by MENA performers involved in the ENP, in anticipation of an approach to legitimate democratic reform through to the future.
Meryem Belkadi (PhD, UBC), How did the ethnic urban apartheid shift to a socio-economic urban apartheid in Moroccan cities? A comparative analysis of urban policies pre- and post-independence
Morocco has a long history of urbanization amongst African countries. The different epochs and waves of urbanization have contributed to the shaping of urban centers and cities in the country. Yet, the largest wave of urbanization has taken place in the last century, under and post the
French protectorate. I argue that the predominant ill of contemporary Moroccan cities, that is the so-called informal settlements, and the urban and socio-economic segregation it imposes upon disenfranchised communities has it roots in the urban policies initiated and implemented under the French protectorate. The latter have yielded in the first place, an ethnic urban segregation, followed post-independence by a socio-economic urban apartheid that translated spatially in the proliferation of informal settlements. Thus, the goal of this presentation is to investigate the protectorate and post-protectorate urban policies to identify the key moments in the history of urban policies that shaped the housing provision and led to housing shortages in the largest cities in the country. This paper is based on a review of secondary data available in journal papers and books with the goal to answer the following research question: At what point in the history of Moroccan urban policies, did the ethnic apartheid imposed by the protectorate administration shift to a socio-economic apartheid post independence? And what are the tools that facilitated or allowed for this transition?