2015
Irish Research Council New Foundations Award
Dr. Patrick Crowley (Department of French) has been awarded an Irish Research Council New Foundations Award for a project and workshop titled EU Policy and Southern Mediterranean Cultural Production
The EU has given greater attention to the southern Mediterranean since 1990. Issues of immigration, natural resources and regional stability have been to the fore. The Barcelona Accords and Declaration of 1995 gave voice to a more cohesive EU Mediterranean strategy. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have been involved in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) Action Plan since 2005. These agreements are important and have taken on greater urgency in the light of the ‘Arab Spring’ that began in early 2011. ‘A Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean’ (March 2011) is a European Commission communication that calls for a review of the ENP to bring about a change in the EU’s approach to the region. It stresses the role of civil society as crucial in contributing to the democratic debate. The purpose of the workshop to be held on July 4 2015 is to analyse and assess the implementation of the EU Neighbourhood policy in relation to its support for cultural production in North Africa. This workshop will bring together policy makers and academics who have worked on EU policy documents relating to the funding instruments and organisations (such as the Anna Lindh Foundation) that have been put in place and the impact of these structures on the formation of a francophone public sphere across the Southern Mediterranean. This project can be situated within Horizon2020 prospective calls relating to ‘Resilient Europe. Societal Challenge 6: Europe in a changing world’
In addition, Dr. Crowley, a member of UCC’s Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century, ISS21, is collaborating through the ISS21 Migration and Integration Research Cluster with cluster members Dr. Caitríona Ní Laoire and Claire Dorrity (both School of Applied Social Studies)who are organising a workshop titled ‘Disposable People’ - The Crisis in the Mediterranean. The two workshops are to be integrated as distinct panels for this two day ISS21 event addressing the topic of The EU and the southern Mediterranean. Details of this workshop are available at http://www.ucc.ie/en/iss21/fullstory-551479-en.html. Both these initiatives follow on from a major international conference that took place in September 2014, Crisis Mobility and New Forms of Migration, funded by the UCC Strategic Research Fund and organised by the Migration and Integration Cluster (ISS21).
‘Disposable People’ - The Crisis in the Mediterranean (July 3)
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates 3,072 lives were lost in the Mediterranean by people trying to make the crossing north to Europe in 2014, compared with an estimate of 700 in 2013 (IOM, 2015). The true number of fatalities is likely to be even higher. Of the 500 who lost their lives in 2013 off the coast of Malta, it is reported that up to 100 of these were children (Ibid). The purpose of this seminar is to examine EU responses to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean, emphasising how migration management overlooks the desperation and the risks undertaken by migrants on a daily basis in their struggle to survive. In the aftermath of the extensive loss of lives in April 2015, the rhetoric on tackling issues has been largely influenced by border control operations, driven by draconian measures on how to curb immigration where “the extension of EU enforcement offshore intensifies differential forms of inclusion and exclusion that play out on the bodies of migrants” (Mountz and Loyd, 2013:175). Within this context the psychological and human aspects of movement and spaces of struggle are often obscured and dominated by border control operations that advocate a tough line on granting asylum and re-settlement.