How is Europe dealing with the concepts of community, citizenship and humanity concepts? What is the kind of universalism that is displayed, believed, practiced by the European Union? What are the relations with its neighbours and the world in general? The idea of this conference is to invite sociologists, political theorists and jurists working from an international political sociology perspective to meet and discuss philosophers, lawyers coming from critical legal theory around the theme of the boundaries framing the conceptualisation of humanity when enunciated by the EU.

WEDNESDAY 27 OCTOBER

First Session 5:00-7:00 pm

Presidence: Ghassan Salamé (Sciences Po Paris, France)

 “European Boundaries of Humanity: Drawing Lines in Borderland?”

The opening debate will be the occasion to present the major books on the subject, to discuss with their authors, to present a short state of the art coming from these books, and to present the themes of the conference addressing questions of research frontiers questions, which need to be answered through interdisciplinary perspectives. Its purpose is to give immediately the audience a sense of what are the key questions, to set the terms of the debate, and to determine the kinds of questions that will dominate discussions in the future. With the blurring of the concepts of political community, citizenship and cosmopolitanism, and the call for humanity and globality, what are the philosophical understandings of boundaries nowadays? How do they resonate to Europe?

Participants:

• Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck College, UK), "Dead Europe? Politics and the Crisis of European Humanity”
• Rada Iveković (Collège international de philosophie-CNRS, France), “Those Other Borderlands. Displacement in Eurasia”
• Rob Walker (University of Victoria, Canada), “Europe, the International, and the Back of Beyond”
• Engin Isin (Open University, UK), “Citizenship after Orientalism”
• Opening questions by a young scholar: Francesco Ragazzi (Leiden University, The Netherlands) 

THURSDAY 28 OCTOBER

Second Session 9:00 am-12.00 pm

 “The Undesirables”

The sociology of European frontiers and the practices of border controls and of policing at a distance which set up the parameters of who is considered as a wanted (or unwanted) human being and/or foreigner citizen inside the EU, regarding nationality, class, money, alleged threats… Biopolitics and governmentality, subjectification, ban opticon. 

Presidence: Christian Lequesne (CERI/Sciences Po Paris, France)

Participants:

• Didier Bigo (Sciences Po Paris, France), “Smart European Borders”
• Frédéric Gros (Université Paris-Est Créteil, France), “Bio-Security and Capitalism”
• Bülent Diken (Lancaster University, UK), “Justification, Critique and the Politics of Immigration”
• Marc Bernardot (Université du Havre, France), “Catch Wars, Comfort Army and Culture of Camp. So Useful Undesirables”
• Opening questions by a young scholar: Julien Jeandesboz (Sciences Po Paris, France) 

Lunch: 12:00-1:30 pm

Third Session 1:30-4:00 pm

“The World as Us: Beyond Diplomacy”

Transforming the world? The europeanisation of the world? A cosmopolitan empire? This session will analyse the international politics of the discourse concerning humanity (human security and human rights) and how it is handled by the EU in comparison with other partners. The projection of Europe outside, reframing the USA, convincing the BRIC? Subjectivation of others. 

Presidence: Bastien Irondelle (CERI/Sciences Po Paris)

Participants:

• João Pontes Nogueira (IRI-PUC Rio, Brazil), “De-disciplinarizing Knowledge, Re-borderizing Humanity?”
• Vivienne Jabri (King’s College, UK), “Governing Humanity and the Re-Mapping of Cosmopolitan Space”
• Patrick Hanafin (Birkbeck College, UK), “A Cosmopolitics of Singularities: Rights and the Thinking of Other Worlds”
• Opening questions by a young scholar: Arnaud Kurze (George Mason University, USA)

Fourth Session: 4:30-7:00 pm

“Critical Geographies of Humanity”

What are the alternative constructions of humanity? How does Europe look from the periphery? How is humanity divided along spatial and temporal lines?

Presidence: Karoline-Postel Vinay (CERI/Sciences Po Paris, France)

Participants:

• Oscar Guardiola Rivera (Birkbeck College, UK), “What If Latin America Ruled the World?’”
• Julia Chryssostalis (University of Westminster, UK), “In the Beginning Was the Fence? Nomos, Topos, Polis”
• Michael Shapiro (University of Hawaii, USA), “The Micropolitics of Justice: Language, Sense and Space”
• Paulo Luiz Esteves (IRI-PUC Rio, Brazil), “When Time and Space Are Out of Joint: The Peripheral Condition”
• Opening questions by a young scholar : Christian Olsson (ULB, Belgium)

FRIDAY 29 OCTOBER

First Session: 9:00 am –12:30 pm

“Technologies, Bodies and Identities: The Reframing of Human Boundaries”

The technological practices of biometrics and exchange of data between state bureaucracies concerning the authentification of individuals and reasons of rejection or pre-emptive policy of interdiction of entry, the role of the industry of security within the reconfiguration of the human being boundaries and possibilities of freedom, the ethical dimension, the relations with the “neighbours” and the “others” and the issues of colonialism, imperialism or tutorship…

Presidence: Gilles Favarel-Garrigues (CERI/Sciences Po, France)

Participants:

• Peter Burgess (PRIO, Norway), “Humanity and Inhumanity of Borders”
• Anastassia Tsoukala (Université Paris-Sud 11, France), “On the Vanishing Subjects of Human Rights”
• Nils Zurawski (Universität Hamburg, Germany), “Identity and Identification. On Humans, Biometrics and the Dynamics of Technology”
• Pierre-Antoine Chardel (ETOS, Institut Télécom, France), “Ethical Perspectives on Mobility and Identity at the Age of Suspicion”
• Emilio Mordini (The Centre for Science, Society and Citizenship, Italy) “About Limes and Borders: Biometrics as a Symbolic Apparatus”

Lunch: 12:30-2:00 pm 

Second Session: 2:00-6:00 pm

“The Boundaries of Rights and Privacy?”

The discourse of human rights and the legal practices of European and American Courts concerning who is accepted and who is denied entry, and under what reasons, the case of Roma, data protection and the challenge of an international legal regime accepted as such beyond the EU.  

Presidence: Sergio Carrera (CEPS, Belgium)

Participants:

• Mireille Delmas-Marty (Collège de France, France), “European Boundaries of Humanity: Legal Practices as Reframing Processes”
• Mark B. Salter (University of Ottawa, Canada), “Canada and the Roma”
• Elspeth Guild (University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands), “Who Regulates Identity in the EU?”
• Judit Toth (Minority Research Institute Budapest, Hungary), “How Roma Are Protected by Law in Europe?”
• Charles Raab (University of Edinburgh, UK), “The Boundaries of Privacy Protection”
• Mervyn Frost (King’s College, UK), “Boundary Problems as Ethical Problems”