Higher seminar with Claudia Tazreiter

Abstract: In this talk I elaborate haunting as an important, though underexplored concept related to the geopolitics of borders. Haunting is discussed as an affective modality related to state violence in bordering practices such as the long-term detention of refugees in remote sites. In this talk I discuss the Australian state’s practices of removing and detaining refugees seeking protection to Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. In exploring the haunting afterlife of violence, the talk considers bordering as spatial, as well as psycho-social practices. Specifically, border deaths as the deaths of refugees on Manus Island, are explored as unjust outcomes of Australia’s carceral archipelago. The exploration of a haunting presence in this context is much more than a theoretical nuance, it mitigates against erasure. Indeed, haunting is developed as a productive lens to understand the impacts of neo-colonial power manifest as necropower in the techniques, policies and administrative measures applied to vulnerable populations in a variety of contexts. 
 
Claudia Tazreiter is Research Chair and Professor in Ethnic and Migration Studies at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), University Linköping. Her research is in the fields of political sociology, social theory, visual cultures, race, ethnicity and migration. The focus of this research is on the social and affective impacts of forced and irregular migration, on human rights culture, the role of civil society in social change, and visual cultures of dissent. She is the author of numerous articles, chapters and books including: Asylum Seekers and the State. The Politics of Protection in a Security-Conscious World (Routledge 2017); Fluid Security in the Asia Pacific. Transnational Lives, Human Rights and State Control (Palgrave 2016); and the Handbook on Migration and Global Justice, edited with Leanne Weber (2021 Edward Elgar). Claudia has held several visiting appointments, including at the Institute for Political Science, University Vienna (2018), Center for Place, Culture and Politics, City University New Work CUNY (2014) and the Centre for International Studies (CERI) Science Po (2011) and is fellow at the Institute for Migration and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), University Osnabrück.