12 Dec 2024 18:00 – 20:00, Framer Framed, Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71, Amsterdam
On 12 December 2024 at Framer Framed, System of Systems launches the first two books in their Managing Displacement series: Outsourcing and Extraction. System of Systems is a research project that analyses the bureaucratic, spatial, and technological conditions shaping Europe’s migration landscape.
The themes of each edition will be discussed by three contributors: critical media scholar Ariana Dongus, spatial and visual researcher Stefanos Levidis, and lecturer Hassan Ould Moctar, and is followed by a Q&A.
Ariana Dongus is a critical media scholar. She researches refugees, migration, and technology, focusing on AI’s social aspects, digital labour exploitation, and invisible infrastructures. Formerly at HfG Karlsruhe, where she taught media theory and coordinated a research group on critical AI, she is now a Research Fellow at TU Dresden.
Stefanos Levidis is a spatial and visual researcher, and is the co-founder and co-director of Forensic Architecture Initiative Athens (FAIA). Stefanos has been working with Forensic Architecture and Forensis since 2016, overseeing the agencies’ work on borders and migration and holds a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths.
Hassan Ould Moctar is a Lecturer in the Anthropology of Migration at SOAS, University of London. He holds a PhD in Development Studies which he obtained from SOAS. His research focuses on the relationship between migration, borders, and development processes, with a regional focus on Mauritania, the West African Sahel, and the Sahara.
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More about the series:
Managing Displacement explores the intricate web of migration management within and beyond Europe’s borders. Each publication begins with a theme or term to examine processes that restrict, surveil, or obscure displaced people.
The first publication, Outsourcing, examines how the EU extends its borders beyond the continent by outsourcing border control. Recognising this practice within a historical trajectory of colonial ordering, it shows how responsibility is systematically deferred and how racist structures are propagated through border management.
Outsourcing contributors: Border Violence Monitoring Network, FRAUD, Nadine El-Enany, Hassan Ould Moctar.
The second publication, Extraction, offers a transhistorical perspective on contemporary border systems. The contributions explore extraction as a process that drives displacement, with enduring effects due to environmental devastation. They also examine extraction as a direct mechanism of border management that financially profits from those who are displaced.
Extraction contributors: Ariana Dongus, Radha D’Souza, Stefanos Levidis, Angela Melitopoulos.
‘Managing Displacement’ is a publication series that explores the intricate web of migration management within and beyond Europe’s borders. Each publication begins with a theme, or term, in order to examine processes that restrict, surveil or obscure displaced people.
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Those displaced and seeking to inhabit the social, political, and economic imaginaries of ‘Europe’ are met with an increasingly hostile frontier. The confluence of obscure legal processes, rising anti-migrant rhetoric, and the use of heavily funded private contractors has enforced the idea of Europe as a ‘fortress’. The very notion of Europe – freedom of movement for some and restriction for others – is upheld through austere migration policy by the European Union, influencing many aspects of political life on the continent and beyond.
Each book in the series delves into a term and a process deployed to restrict, surveil, or obscure displaced peoples. Underpinning the publications is the understanding that displacement is deeply entangled with historical legacies of colonialism, resource extraction, and late-stage capitalism. We seek to redress the framing of displacement as something to be managed, by re-defining the processes employed to do so.
Edited by System of Systems
Published in December 2024
Designed by Rose Nordin
Copyedited by Harriet Foyster