The next session of the Meetings Migration Experiences will take place on May 26, starting at 2:30 p.m., in room A104 of Building 4 at Iscte.

The session, entitled “Slippery Modes of Institutional Racism in the Securitized Migration Regime in Portugal,” will be led by CIES researcher Nina Amelung.

ABSTRACT
The presentation will be based on a paper in which the author engages with contemporary manifestations and practices of institutional racism as part of an increasingly securitized migration management regime in Portugal. We focus on differential legal, bureaucratic, and data management treatments to which some non-citizens are exposed when they want to claim their rights. We aim to attend to the slippery modes of doing differences in society that criminalize and marginalize migrant populations and have multiple racializing effects, thus to the slippery politics of race. The paper relies on an analysis of interviews conducted with civil society actors, legal and policy documents and media coverage of the migration management and public discourse on migration in Portugal. First, the EU wide turn towards stricter anti-migration and surveillance policies manifested in the New Pact on Migration and Asylum constraints Portugal. Together with national dysfunctional structures of migration bureaucracy this creates a drastic precarious panorama for racialized and marginalized migrants to access their rights. Second, differential legal treatments to define protection, residential status and access to rights across different national population groups adds to the experience of racism of migrants.