Pau Garcia is a predoctoral researcher at the School of Communication and International Relations at Blanquerna – Ramon Llull University (Barcelona). His doctoral research examines how extractive economies and (un)sustainable development processes shape irregular migration from The Gambia to the European Union, from a postcolonial world-ecology perspective.
The abstract of the presentation is as follows:
This research explores how the global fishing industry operating in The Gambia, West Africa, affects human mobility patterns in those coastal communities’ areas under socioenvironmental stress, which experience food insecurity concerns, job losses, and social unrest, among others impacts. In particular, using a postcolonial world ecology framework, it analyses international migration by carefully looking at the socioeconomic, environmental, and historical background surrounding this phenomenon, which operates within the logic of global production chains under neoliberal development models. Additionally, this work challenges the European Union’s doble-standards on fisheries development policy and critically examines the EU’s increasing securitized discourse on migration. Thus, considering that while the affected individuals are the ones who experience (im)mobilities depending on context-specific scenarios, these occur within global necropolitical structures that shape human mobility patterns. Employing a qualitative case study approach, this work combines document analysis with ethnographic methods, such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and participatory action research (PAR), to ultimately investigate how the socioecological impacts triggered by this extractive economy may shape individuals' (im)mobility aspirations in The Gambia.
The meeting will be hybrid, in person in room 5.1 on the 5th floor of UGent's Campus Dunant (Dunantlaan 2) and online through this link: A Postcolonial World-Ecology Approach to International Migration: The (Un)Sustainable Development of Fisheries in The Gambia and (im)mobility dynamics to the European Union | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams.
Don't hesitate to spread this invitation further and write to rossella.marino@ugent.be for questions.