Making Migration Law: The Foreigner, Sovereignty and the Case of Australia

Event date
29 October 2018
Event time
12:45 - 14:00
Oxford week
Venue
Meeting Room A - Oxford Department of International Development
Speaker(s)
Eve Lester

Welcome and welcome back! We would like to invite you to our first event this term. Our speaker is Dr Eve Lester, who will talk about her new book Making Migration Law: The Foreigner, Sovereignty and the Case of Australia.

About the event:  
In her book Eve describes how migration law in Australia is best understood as part of a longer jurisprudential tradition in which certain political-economic interests have shaped the relationship between the foreigner and the sovereign. Her book explores how this relationship has been wrought by a political-economic desire to regulate race and labour; a desire that has produced the claim that there exists an absolute sovereign right to exclude or condition the entry and stay of foreigners. Lester calls this putative right a discourse of 'absolute sovereignty'. She argues that 'absolute sovereignty' talk continues to be a driver of migration lawmaking, shaping the foreigner-sovereign relation and making thinkable some of the world's harshest asylum policies.

 
About the speaker: 
Eve Lester is a public and international lawyer with a background in refugee, migration and human rights law, policy and practice spanning more than twenty-five years.  Based in Australia, her work has taken her to Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific in a range of capacities in the non-government sector, with the UN, and as an independent adviser to governments. She has delivered courses and/or guest lectures and seminars in a number of tertiary institutions in Australia and overseas, including the Australian National University, New York University and the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in Sanremo, Italy. Eve has a PhD from Melbourne Law School. 
 
Meeting Room A in Oxfords Department of International Development (QEH on Mansfield Road).
 Sandwich lunch will be provided. All are welcome, no RSVP is needed. 
 

The Refugee and Migration Discussion Group also welcomes presentations of papers or works-in-progress. Please do contact one of the convenors if you are interested in talking to the group or have an idea for an informal discussion.

For any questions feel free to be in touch. Co-conveners Maayan Ravid (maayan.ravid@lincoln.ox.ac.uk)Teresa Büchsel (teresa.buchsel@wolfson.ox.ac.uk) and Emilie McDonnell (emilie.mcdonnell@univ.ox.ac.uk). Our Senior Member is Professor Cathryn Costello

If you would like to join the group’s mailing list, please send a blank email torefugee_migration-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk
You can also join our Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/OxfordRefugeeandMigrationLawDG/
 
We are looking forward to seeing you at the event!
 

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