Founded in 1992, the Sussex European Institute (SEI) is an interdisciplinary research hub that brings together scholars and experts whose work engages with Europe’s political institutions, political economy, and its historical legacies.
SEI facilitates a dialogue between scholars based in various departments across and beyond the University of Sussex, including disciplines such as Anthropology, History, International Relations, Law, Sociology, Politics, Law, and Economics. Our community of scholars also works closely with practitioners, policy makers and the voluntary sector.
Europe is often seen as a realm - or even cradle of - democracy, freedom, and rights. Other times, European integration is viewed as in perpetual crisis. In our understanding, Europe not only takes shape through such projected self-images, but also constitutes itself through European states’ and institutions’ historic and contemporary actions – which have crafted internal power asymmetries and produced global inequalities.
Upcoming Events
Spring 2023
Next Spring term event
Thursday/ Friday 4th & 5th May 2023
Sussex European Institute & LPS Doctoral School: Europe’s peripheral and racial (b)orders
Panel discussion (open to everyone) and work-in-progress workshop (open to postgrads/ postdocs)
Expert Panel (4th May, 1.30 – 3pm). Moot Room, Freeman Building. All welcome!
Sabine Hess (Professor in European Ethnology, University of Göttingen)
Josh Bowsher (Lecturer in Sociology, University of Sussex)
Arshad Isakjee (Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Liverpool)
Work-in-progress sessions (4th May: 3.30 – 5.30pm, 5th May: 10-12pm, 1-3pm).
The Sussex European Institute and the Doctoral Programme at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology invite expressions of interest for an interdisciplinary work-in-progress workshop for early career scholars at the University of Sussex. The event will involve an expert panel (which will be open to everyone) and 2-3 work-in-progress sessions for scholars at doctoral and postdoctoral level which are designed to facilitate exchanges about research experiences (and will be closed to the wider public). We are particularly keen to hear from early career scholars who critically engage with Europe, coloniality, the making of peripheries and semi-peripheries, borders, human rights, racism, and data activism in these areas. Specifically, the event will focus on Europe’s racial orders, the making of (semi-)peripheral border zones, bordering practices on land and at sea, and critical humanitarianism and other repertoires of resistance. We will also discuss the practicalities of working in critical border studies, including the ethics of data collection, asymmetrical relations, issues arising from data activism, and trends of criminalising activist research or research-based activism.
Chairs:
Aleks Lewicki, (Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Co-Director Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex)
Nuno Ferreira, (Professor of Law, Director of Doctoral Studies, University of Sussex)
Katy Budge, (Doctoral Tutor, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex)
Abstracts:
Border fortification as racial infrastructure: a field report from the Polish-Belarussian border space
Sabine Hess (Professor in European Ethnology, University of Göttingen)
Against the backdrop of a recent research trip to the Eastern EU border zone of Poland with Belarus the presentation will shed light on central new dynamics and practices of the EU border regime. It will focus on the normalization of violence and the obvious violation of human rights nearly everywhere along the EU external border by drawing on insights of critical race theory and postcolonial readings of the European project; the presentation will also ask how we can make sense of the massive fortification of the EU-external border zone with fence constructions and other human-technical devices despite the obvious fact that it doesn’t stop migration and suggests to read the border-apparatus as racial(izing) infrastructure.
Exploring the Epistemic Possibilities and Limits of Data Activist Practice at the European Border: Preliminary Notes on Forensic Architecture’s ‘Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe’ and ‘The Left-to-Die Boat.’
Josh Bowsher (Lecturer in Sociology, University of Sussex)
In recent years, the research agency Forensic Architecture (FA) has developed a novel set of data activist practices intended to confront the deadly consequences of the European border regime, primarily for refugees moving across the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. Using a range of digital data and computational techniques, including satellite tracking and imaging, firsthand video footage, oceanographic data, and spatial modelling, FA’s work has sought to (re)construct factual narratives about refugee encounters with European borders for the purposes of human rights litigation and broader awareness-raising. Focusing in on two of FA’s investigations, ‘Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe’ and ‘The Left-to-Die Boat’, this presentation will critically consider these data practices through an epistemological lens by drawing on work from critical data studies and, crucially, Donna Haraway’s conception of ‘situated knowledges’. By critically reading the shifting perspectives from which data is first captured, and then assembled and narrated by FA, the presentation hopes to consider some of the possibilities, tensions, and limits opened up by the data practices FA has developed to criticise and confront the European border regime.
Games of Survival: Actually-existing asylum along the European border
Arshad Isakjee (Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Liverpool)
This paper draws on long-term ethnographic research in the Balkans, along migrant routes with people-on-the-move (POM) intending to cross borders to enter the European Union, usually in an attempt to claim asylum. The act of crossing borders in this way has largely come to be known amongst POM as ‘the game’ - and as this paper will argue, in practice claiming asylum in Europe is indeed far better understood as a ‘game’ than as a ‘right'. As POM attempts to cross they are routinely intercepted by border police in Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia and illegally pushed back to the countries from which they are travelling. They are also regularly subject to border violence and then having to survive in harsh conditions in squats and in forest camps in border and transit zones in the Balkans. What this paper explores is how ‘success’ in the game is predetermined by wealth, health and race - and that material resources in particular influence both the probability of successfully reaching the EU with reduced exposure to violence and injury. The paper reflects on asylum in the EU not as a right, but as a game, the social-Darwinist implications of which both reflect capitalism’s inequities as well as being shaped by them. It closes by suggesting that practices of solidarity can counter the individuation of risk and survival, conditioned by the actually-existing asylum system of Fortress Europe.
Europe’s peripheral and racial (b)orders: Programme download the word doc here- Wednesday Date TBC, Migratization - The Ascription of Migration as Performative Practice
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Migratization - The Ascription of Migration as Performative Practice
Alyosxa Tudor (Reader in Gender Studies, SOAS)
Date: Wednesday, (new date to be confirmed)
Venue: tbc
Abstract: To make sense of the overlapping racist, anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetoric that marks the pre- and post-Brexit moment in the UK, in my talk I suggest differentiating between racism/racialization and migratism/migratization in critical scholarship. The conceptualizations foreground a postcolonial understanding of racism and make it possible to analyze both migration-based discrimination and discrimination based on perceived migration in violence and hate crimes connected to the Brexit referendum. I first coined ‘migratization’ in the book chapter ‘Racism and Migratism: The Relevance of a Critical Differentiation’ (Tudor 2010): “Migration and migrants are not at the center of this article, but the power relations that construct migration. I call the process of construction ‘migratization’; the power relation that constructs ‘migratization’ is ‘migratism’’ (Tudor 2010, 396). Racialization and migratization are not symmetrical or oppositional but have a complicated interdependent relationship, are bound to each other and play a crucial role in organizing the Western nation state. To illustrate my arguments that intend to challenge and extend existing scholarship, I discuss exemplary snapshots from news articles, blog posts and social media sources. I suggest conceptualizing migratization (the ascription of migration) as performative practice (Tudor 2018) that repeatedly re-stages a sending-off to an elsewhere and that works in close interaction with racialization. I argue that the proposed differentiation can help us to disentangle the layers of ascriptions of migration and racialization we witness in the examples, without downplaying the role of white supremacy on one hand or ignoring the migration-based discrimination against East Europeans on the other.
- Monday 13 March 2023, Rapid Response Roundtable on the Illegal Migration Bill
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Rapid Response Roundtable on the Illegal Migration Bill
Date: Monday 13th March 2023
Time: 1-2:30pm Rapid Response Roundtable on the Illegal Migration Bill
Venue: Online
Chair: Dr Stephanie Berry
Contributors:
- Wednesday 15 March 2023, Interrogating Muslims: The Liberal-Secular Matrix of Integration
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Interrogating Muslims: The Liberal-Secular Matrix of Integration
Schirin Amir-Moazami (Professor of Islam in Europe, Freie Universität Berlin)
Date: Wednesday 15 March 2023
Time: 2pm
Venue: Freeman Building,G22
Abstract: This book interrogates the patterns and discursive structures that have generated the seeming urgency of Muslims' integration. Focusing on Germany, it problematizes the grounds on which politics of integration are justified and reasoned upon, and thereby investigates divergent operations of power vis-à-vis Muslims and Islam in a formally liberal-secular society. The integration paradigm in Germany has been predicated on an imperial knowledge regime, in which Islam figures as the external friend or enemy of an imagined Christian secular. This book analyzes three kinds of integration practices as symptomatic sites for the multifaceted dimensions of power in this paradigm: the scientific measurement of Muslims' degrees of integration which are correlated with their degrees of religiosity; the politics of recognition promoted by state-organized dialogue with Muslims; and the threat of sanction, found in the regulations of citizenship and explicitly in citizenship tests. Centrally, the book argues that the paradigm of integration navigates between universalist claims and particularistic-racial and religious-re-enactments of a secular nation-state framework at moments in which this very framework is crumbling.
- Wednesday 29 March 2023, Racist and Imperial Genealogies in LGBT- free Zones and Struggles over Europe in Poland
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Racist and Imperial Genealogies in LGBT-free Zones and Struggles over Europe in Poland
Pawel Lewicki (Associate Director, European Studies Centre, Pittsburg)
Date: Wednesday 29 March 20023
Time: 5pm
Venue: Via Zoom, details nearer the time
Abstract: Since early 2019, around 100 municipalities, counties and regions (voivodeships) in Poland have declared themselves ‘LGBT-free zones.’ None of the documents passed by the local councils with titles like ‘Local Charter of the Rights of the Family’ or ‘A Resolution Against LGBT Ideology’ mentions LGBT people explicitly; they refer instead to “gender ideology” or pledge “defence” of the “fundamentality” of the binary-gender family, a structure that is allegedly anchored in the Polish legal order and is a condition for prosperity in Poland (Sejmik Województwa Podkarpackiego 2019; Rada Powiatu w Nowym Targu 2020). While some of these documents were turned down by the courts or were withdrawn in the face of funding cuts from the EU, I want to show how the emergence of the so-called LGBT-free zones in Poland has deeper roots and is entangled with long-lasting global racist dynamics which are perpetuated by processes of Europeanization. The establishment of these zones is also an effect of the historical inter-imperial positionality of Poland. If we look at these zones from a postcolonial and decolonial, race-critical perspective, they emerge as a local version of global and European race and gender dynamics that have been present in Poland for a very long time.
- Friday 21 April 2023, SEI Anniversary Lecture: Energy Crisis and the European Union
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SEI Anniversary Lecture: Energy Crisis and the European Union
Speaker: Piotr Serafin (Director of Transport, Telecommunications and Energy at the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union)
Chair: Professor Dame Helen Wallace FBA
Date: April 21st 2023
Time: 3-5pm BST
Venue: University of Sussex, Jubilee Building, Jub-144
Abstract: Rising geopolitical tensions since autumn 2021 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine that followed have forced the EU to revise truths that have been unquestioned for years. It is primarily a defining moment for the architecture of security in Europe. But the energy policy of the EU was also put to an unprecedented stress test. And although the process of re-evaluation and change is still ongoing, essential contours of a new consensus are already visible today.
At least 4 assumptions of the EU’s energy policy were put into question by the current crisis. The assumption of Russia as a reliable energy supplier driven by business motivations has collapsed. The threats to security of supply posed by the redefinition of Russia's role also undermined, at least for a time, the decision to move away from coal and further financing of the expansion of the fossil fuels infrastructure. The gas price shock undermined the consensus to minimize public intervention in gas market. And finally, the electricity market design, especially the exposure of consumers to spot markets and the role of gas prices in price formation, has been called into question.
However, the crisis has not cast doubt on the long-term goal of decarbonising the European energy mix, but on the contrary has become an argument for accelerating it. Although renewables have emerged as the undisputed winner of EU debates in 2022, the crisis has reignited the smouldering conflict between EU Member States over the role of nuclear energy in the decarbonisation of the European economy.
- Wednesday 26 April 2023, Queer, Iranian and in exile: Comparing the experiences of Iranian queer refugees living in Turkey, the UK and Canada
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Queer, Iranian and in exile: Comparing the experiences of Iranian queer refugees living in Turkey, the UK and Canada
Moira Dustin, Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex
Nuno Ferreira, Professor of Law, University of Sussex
Kamran Matin, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Sussex
Mehran Rezaei Toroghi, Research Fellow in Law, University of Sussex
Date: Wednesday 26 April 2023
Time: 3pm
Venue: TBC
- Thursday/Friday 4th & 5th May 2023, Sussex European Institute & LPS Doctoral School: Europe's peripheral and racial (b)orders
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Thursday/Friday 4th & 5th May 2023
Sussex European Institute & LPS Doctoral School:
Europe’s peripheral and racial (b)orders
Panel discussion (open to everyone) and work-in-progress workshop (open to postgrads/ postdocs)
Expert Panel (4th May, 1.30 – 3pm). Moot Room, Freeman Building. All welcome!
Josh Bowsher (Lecturer in Sociology, University of Sussex)
Sabine Hess (Professor in European Ethnology, University of Göttingen)
Arshad Isakjee (Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Liverpool)
Work-in-progress sessions (4th May: 3.30 – 5.30pm, 5th May: 10-12pm, 1-3pm).
The Sussex European Institute and the Doctoral Programme at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology invite expressions of interest for an interdisciplinary work-in-progress workshop for early career scholars at the University of Sussex. The event will involve an expert panel (which will be open to everyone) and 2-3 work-in-progress sessions for scholars at doctoral and postdoctoral level which are designed to facilitate exchanges about research experiences (and will be closed to the wider public). We are particularly keen to hear from early career scholars who critically engage with Europe, coloniality, the making of peripheries and semi-peripheries, borders, human rights, racism, and data activism in these areas. Specifically, the event will focus on Europe’s racial orders, the making of (semi-)peripheral border zones, bordering practices on land and at sea, and critical humanitarianism and other repertoires of resistance. We will also discuss the practicalities of working in critical border studies, including the ethics of data collection, asymmetrical relations, issues arising from data activism, and trends of criminalising activist research or research-based activism.
Chairs:
Aleks Lewicki, (Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Co-Director Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex)
Nuno Ferreira, (Professor of Law, Director of Doctoral Studies, University of Sussex)
Katy Budge, (Doctoral Tutor, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex)Click here for the full programme
Past Events
Autumn 2022
- Wednsday 21 September 2022, Workshop: Emotions, Brexit and European Politics
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Workshop: Emotions, Brexit and European Politics
Date: Wednesday 21st September 2022
Time: 2-4pm
Location: via Zoom
Description:
The aim of the workshop is to allow participants working within this area to share their research and to have an informal discussion about the connections between emotion, Brexit, and populism in Europe. After a brief introduction from our side and a few introductory words, we would like to give our invited speakers the opportunity to talk about their research and how it connects to the themes of the workshop (for a maximum of 10 minutes each). Following that, we would like to open up the conversation for a free-flowing informal exchange of views around the question of ‘How does attention to emotion change our understanding of Brexit and support for populism in European politics?’
Convenors: Emily Robinson, Jonathan Moss, Jake Watts
- Wednesday 19 October 2022 Giorgia and friends: The Italian general election 2022 - Dr Simona Guerra (Surrey)
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Title: Giorgia and friends: The Italian general election 2022 - Dr Simona Guerra (Surrrey)
Date: Wednesday 19 October 2022
Time: 14:00 - 15:50
Venue: Freeman F39, University of Sussex
- Wednesday 16 November 2022 - Radicalism, identity construction and emotionality in soical movements - Dr Savroula Chrona (Sussex)
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Title: Radicalism, identity construction and emotionality in social movements – Dr Stavroula Chrona (Sussex)
Date: Wednesday 16 November 2022
Time: 14:00 - 15:50
Venue: Freeman F39, University of Sussex
- TBC, Values and civic participation - Professor Paula Suridge (Bristol)
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Title: Values and civic participation – Professor Paula Surridge (Bristol)
Date: TBC
Time: TBC
Venue: Freeman F39, University of Sussex
- Wednesday 7 December 2022, Selection of Legislative Candidates in Turkey's Main Opposition Party: A Macro and Micro Level Analysis fom Bourdieusian Perspective - Dr Osman Kocaaga (Sussex and Kirklareli Universities)
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Title: Selection of Legislative Candidates in Turkey's Main Opposition Party: A Macro and Micro Level Analysis from Bourdieusian Perspective – Dr Osman Kocaaga (Sussex and Kirklareli Universities)
Date: Wednesday 7 December 2022
Time: 14:00 – 15:50
Venue: Freeman F39, University of Sussex
2021-2022
- Thursday 5 May 2022, Sussex European Institute 30th Anniversary Event
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Sussex European Institute 30th Anniversary Event
Date: Thursday 5th May 2022
Time: 09:30am - 4:00pm BST
Venue: Moot Room (G06 Freeman Centre)
For full details visit here
- Wednesday 02 March 2022, Anglo-Irish relations in the wake of Brexit
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Title: Anglo-Irish relations in the wake of Brexit
Date: Wednesday 02 March 2022
Time: 2pm to 3:30pm
Venue: Via Zoom
Speaker: Etain Tannam (Trinity College Dublin)
- Wednesday 30 March 2022, The forthcoming presidential and legislative elections in France
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Title: The forthcoming presidential and legislative elections in France
Date: Wednesday 30 March 2022
Time: 2pm to 3:30pm
Venue: Freeman G16
Speaker: Sue Collard (Sussex)
- Wednesday 13 October 2021, Beyond the Cartel: Parties, Anti-System and Democracy in the 21st Century
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Title: Beyond the Cartel: Parties, Anti-System and Democracy in the 21st Century
Date: Wednesday 13 October 2021
Time: 14:00 - 15:50
Event: Online via zoom
Speaker: Jonathan Hopkin (LSE)
- Wednesday 24 November 2021, Small Worlds in Europe: investigating the Determinants of Non-Statewide Party Success
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Title: Small Worlds in Europe: Investigating the Determinants of Non-Statewide Party Success
Date: Wednesday 24 November 2021
Time: 14:00 to 15:50
Venue: Ashdown House 102
Speaker: Jonathan Parker, University of Sussex
2020-2021
- Wednesday 23 June 2021, The ongoing Politics of Brexit and Ireland
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Title: The Ongoing Politics of Brexit and Ireland
Date: Wednesday 23 June 2021
Time: 4-6pm London UK time
Venue: On-line via Zoom
Speakers: Prof Katy Hayward, Prof Brigid Laffan, Prof John O’Brennan
Chair: Dr Neil Dooley, University of Sussex
Abstract
The ‘unique circumstances on the island of Ireland’ have fundamentally shaped the negotiations around, the outcomes of, and the aftermath of Brexit. While the impact of Brexit on Ireland and Northern Ireland barely featured during the 2016 referendum campaign, it quickly became one of the thorniest and most defining issues in negotiations. Despite pledges to ‘get Brexit done’ and the UK formally exiting the EU on January 31st 2021, tensions and negotiations around the Northern Ireland protocol have persisted. Ireland was, and remains absolutely central to the ongoing politics of Brexit.
Presented by the Sussex European Institute, this workshop will explore questions around the centrality of Ireland's interests in Brexit negotiations, the current UK government position on the Northern Ireland protocol, the impact of Brexit and ‘de-Europeanisation’ on British-Irish relations and how the politics of Ireland/Northern Ireland understood and framed by UK political elites. It will broadly consider, if the politics of Brexit are ongoing, what role will ‘the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland’ play in their evolution?Presented by the Sussex European Institute, this workshop will explore questions around the centrality of Ireland's interests in Brexit negotiations, the current UK government position on the Northern Ireland protocol, the impact of Brexit and ‘de-Europeanisation’ on British-Irish relations and how the politics of Ireland/Northern Ireland understood and framed by UK political elites. It will broadly consider, if the politics of Brexit are ongoing, what role will ‘the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland’ play in their evolution?
- Wednesday 17 March 2021, Europe's unsafe environment anti-migrant violence in COVID times
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Title: Europe’s unsafe environment anti-migrant violence in COVID times
Date: Wednesday 17 March 2021
Time: 4-5pm London UK time
Venue: On-line via Zoom
Speaker: Dr Maurice Stierl, University of Warwick
Abstract
The Covid-19 crisis has prompted a range of novel mobility restrictions that have impacted migrant and displaced communities particularly harshly. Focussing on the situation at Europe’s external borders, I will examine the drastic anti-migrant deterrence and racialised containment measures that have emerged over the first year of the pandemic. Although these measures need to be understood in the continuity of the EU border regime, we can nonetheless observe a shift: from hostile Europe to unsafe Europe. While practically, Europe’s manifold hostile environment policies vis-à-vis precarious migrants persist, the Covid-19 emergency has allowed to justify ‘keeping them out’ or ‘containing them elsewhere’ in the name of their own protection, far away from Europe’s unsafe environment, plagued by a rampant pandemic.
Chair: Dr Aleks Lewicki, University of Sussex