The Anti-Refugee Machine

How and why do interventions that purport to target the ‘root causes’ of migration exacerbate conditions that create displacement while making it harder for migrants to achieve political asylum? This workshop theorizes how the ‘Anti-Refugee Machine’ operates to recast asylum seekers as economic migrants, empowers governments who collaborate in detaining and deporting migrants, encourages trafficking, inflames anti-migrant sentiment, and pre-empts the political basis of claims to legal recognition. What are the consequences for migrants, for migration policy and law, and for humanitarianism and human rights at a time when both refuge and rights are under assault?

Convened by

• Nathalie Peutz, Associate Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies and Anthropology, NYUAD
• Tricia Hepner, Associate Professor of Anthropology & Director, MA Program in Social Justice and Human Rights, Arizona State University
• Magnus Treiber, Professor of Anthropology, LMU Munich