MMIC Seminar Series: Assoc. Professor Pierluigi Musarò - 'Aware Migrants'
This seminar is presented by the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre.
About this event
In this seminar, Pierluigi Musarò will explore how information campaigns to deter potential migrants and refugees from leaving their countries depict them in very specific ways, operating as 'new bordering practices' in conjunction with extraterritorial border policies. This issue will be explored using the example of a specific information campaign - Aware Migrants (2016) - funded by the Italian Government and managed by International Organization for Migration to dissuade potential newcomers from attempting the journey across the Mediterranean Sea. As an analysis of Aware Migrants makes clear, these campaigns contribute to normalising a transnational imaginary of a militarised borderscape comprising places of violence and death, exploitation and detention, which is part of the complex dichotomies of care and control, proper of contemporary border regimes. This seminar will shed light on how these symbolic bordering practices contribute to nurturing a 'compassionate repression' that increasingly and silently legitimises the difference between the 'us' (the figure of the citizen) and the 'them' (the figure of the foreigner).
Event details
Date: 12 February 2019 1.00 pm - 2.00 pm
Venue: Elizabeth Burchill Room, E561, Menzies Building, 20 Chancellors Walk, Clayton Campus, Monash University
Contact: RSVP to Kieran Hegarty at kieran.hegarty@monash.edu.
About the speaker
Pierluigi Musarò is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna, Italy, where he leads modules such as 'Humanitarian Communication' and 'Media and Security'. He is Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge-New York University, and at Monash University (Melbourne). He is author of several books and papers in the field of migration, borders, human rights, media communication. He is President of the Italian NGO YODA and founding Director of IT.A.CÀ_migrants and travelers: Festival of Responsible Tourism.