AMIS seminar - Danish desires to export asylum responsibility to camps outside Europe: A research-based discussion
In February 2021, the Danish Frederiksen-government tabled a legislative proposal for a public hearing, which could radically transform Denmark´s asylum system: Referencing the Australian Pacific Solution as inspiration, it proposes the closure of peoples´ possibility to apply for asylum on Danish territory. Instead, asylum seekers are to be mass transferred to camp-structures outside Europe, where those granted refugee statuses will also stay.
This proposal follows increasing intra-European fractures in collaboration about responses to mass displacement. And while North European civil servants have long tried to externalize asylum responsibilities, the plans have equally long been resisted by countries in the global South calling it neo-colonial lacking solidarity. The current proposal and all similar European plans face the same critical questions regarding: the location of such camps; who should host them; who will possess legal responsibility for them; what kind of standards they will have; and how Denmark will ensure international human rights.
This AMIS seminar gathers some of Denmark´s foremost experts on asylum and migration policy to contribute research-based, multidisciplinary perspectives for discussing the currently unfolding processes in Danish asylum politics.
| 15:00 | Marie Sandberg (associate professor, Director of AMIS | Welcome |
| 15:05 | Martin Lemberg-Pedersen (associate professor AMIS) | Martin Lemberg-Pedersen will give an overview of the evolution of Danish and European externalization and extra-territorialization politics, discourses, discussions, and controversies, with a particular focus on the run-up to the current legislative proposal |
| 15:20 | Ahlam Chemlali (PhD, DIIS) | Ahlam Chemlali will contextualize and discuss the Danish discourses on exporting asylum and border facilities to non-European third countries, such as "North Africa," by discussing dynamics in North African countries when it comes to European attempts to conclude partnerships on border control and security |
| 15:35 | Zachary Whyte (associate professor, AMIS) | Zachary Whyte will relate the legislative proposal and its underlying policy drive to ongoing dynamics in the Danish asylum system and discuss how the hypothetical policy in some cases continue and in other cases break with some of these tendencies |
| 15:50 | Nik Feith Tan (senior researcher, Danish Institute for Human Rights) | Nik Feith Tan will analyze Denmark´s extraterritorial asylum politics with a particular view to the justifications invoking parallels to the Australian "Pacific Solution," as well as other examples of international practice, and the implications of this externalization practice, when it comes to refugee law, human rights and international relations |
| 16:05 | Marie Sandberg (AMIS) | Q&A |
In order to receive the Zoom-link, please send us an email stating your name and email-address.
Registration deadline: 26 February, 12:00 (CET)
Everyone is welcome!