Beyond “Fortress Europe”: The French Atlantic and Indian Ocean as the First Line of Border Control
A talk by Catherine Benoit
Wednesday February 10, 2016
Room 9207, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
GRADUATE CENTER, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK. 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street
When the enslaved Africans took the words of the French Revolution and declared themselves citizens, the French colonies of Haiti, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana were in the vanguard of the struggle for the republican ideal of political and legal equality between human beings. By contrast, today the very same territories, as well as the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, are in the vanguard of a French “regime of deportation” involving both foreign nationals and the indigenous populations living in these territories. Since the 1990s, a set of laws, sometimes described as “laws of exception,” place many of these residents in a state of “illegality.” In this talk I will explore how these territories constitute the first wall of “Fortress Europe,” not only because of their location on the periphery of Europe but also because of their historical role in the development of coercive policies towards foreign nationals today in Europe. I will examine the historical construct of “illegality” from both a political and a legal standpoint, describe the military and police controls in order to analyze the “deportation regime” implemented by the French government in its former colonial empire.
Catherine Benoît is Professor of Anthropology at Connecticut College. Her research interests focus on the body and the experience of space in the African diaspora of the Caribbean. She has published widely on this topic including Corps, Jardins, Mémoires. Anthropologie du corps et de l’espace à la Guadeloupe (2000). Her last book Dans le cœur des ténèbres de la Friendly island : migrations, sida et culture à Saint-Martin (2015) explores the transnational therapeutic itineraries of the immigrants living with AIDS who look for care in St. Martin, Haiti, Guadeloupe and Europe. She is currently completing a book manuscript on border reinforcement in the French overseas territories of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean.
