CAS SEE Seminars with Guests: Lucien Vilhalva de Campos

In the last two decades, the European borders have been monitored and supervised with scrutiny by authorities tasked with border control issues. European authorities have adopted security measures of containment to deter migration by boat. These measures have only contributed to the exacerbation of violence along the EU maritime border. Thus, as a manifestation of a Fortress Europe, the Central Mediterranean Sea has been transformed into a watery graveyard.

However, civil society groups have been creating and reinforcing initiatives to respond adequately to this violent border regime. These initiatives emanate possibilities for resistance. Chief among these initiatives is the work of non-profit organizations. These organizations conduct search and rescue operations for migrant boats in distress on the high seas.

Unfortunately, the academic community has not given the vital role played by these initiatives in generating critical knowledge about the structural violence of the European border regime enough thought. To fulfill this gap, my research at the Department of International Relations of the Central European University (CEU – Vienna) relied on the video method and the roundtable technique to discuss audiences’ ways of thinking about the sea rescue cause in the Central Mediterranean.