Borders and belonging: what migration tells us about ourselves with Hiroshi Motomura

Throughout the world, migration has become the issue on which elections are decided. Why? And what does that tell us about ourselves? With Hiroshi Motomura, Matthew Longo, Wafa Al Ali, Nanda Oudejans en Martijn Stronks.

While the EU continually breaks human rights to stop migrants from reaching Europe, the US is plunging itself into a constitutional crisis over a wrongfully deported migrant that is now detained in a Salvadorian prison.

Migration is such a loaded subject, that it is difficult to see what an ethical migration policy could and should actually look like. Tonight, we discuss migration and migration policy, national borders and nationalist politics, and the toxic stranglehold they have on each other.

About the speakers:

Hiroshi Motomura is world renowned migration scholar, working at the UCLA School of Law. In his new book Borders and belonging, he offers a nuanced take on the very complex issue of migration. Starting with the national border as a concept, Motomura asks fundamental questions about the root causes of migration and offers realistic proposals towards fair migration policy.

Matthew Longo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University, where he teaches political theory. His work focuses on problems of borders and migration, with a thematic interest in questions of sovereignty, authority and freedom. He wrote the award winning books The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain and The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11.

Nanda Oudejans is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Law and Director of the College of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam. Prior to joining the University of Amsterdam, she held academic positions at Utrecht University, VU Amsterdam, and Tilburg University. From 2012 to 2014, she served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Advisory Committee on Migration Affairs at the Ministry of Justice and Security in The Hague.

Wafa Al Ali is a legal affairs journalist at the political desk of newspaper NRC, with a specific focus on asylum. For NRC, she also created the podcast series Generatie 9/11, about how Islamic and/or Arab youths experienced the aftermath of the attacks in the Netherlands. Al Ali chose journalism in 2020, after working in the NGO sector for several years.

Martijn Stronks studied law and philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Cape Town University, South Africa. After his studies he became Editor-in-Chief of the migration law journal Migrantenrecht and its successor Asiel&Migrantenrecht. Between 1 september 2012 and 31 augustus 2016 he wrote a legal and philosophical dissertation on the role of time in European migration law. Since September 2016 he works at the Amsterdam Centre of Migration and Refugee Law (ACMRL) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Since 2025 he is head of ACMRL.

Programme editor and moderator: Veronica Baas

In collaboration with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

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