Taking Protests Seriously: Tunisia and Global Migration Governance
The Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law presents
About
Refugees, asylum seekers, and activists engaged in social mobilizations carve space for re-thinking our current global governance regime on cross-border movement. The mixed-movement protests which occurred outside the UNHCR offices in Tunisia from January to June 2022 shed light on structural failures in North African refugee policy. Asylum seeker sites of agency shed light on geopolitical and legal constraints experienced and contested by individuals. Taking these protests seriously implies considering the post-colonial and geo-political interests coming from states and institutions who set the rules of global migration policy.
About the speaker
Laurence LeBlanc's range of academic interests often intersect at the crossroads between geopolitical constraints, subordinated peoples' exercise of human rights, and eco-feminist critiques. Having both lived in the Ecuadorian Amazon researching peasant mobilization against corporate impunity and having worked in rural Kenya with women exercising their agency through women's groups, she took a keen interest in understanding refugee mobilizations while working with the UNHCR in Tunisia this past summer. She received her MA at McGill University in Political Science and is currently in her final year of the BCL/JD law program.
