Donald Martin Carter, visiting associate professor of Africana Studies, presented a paper at the Center for African Studies Gwendolen M. Carter conference at the University of Florida, Gainesville, on Feb. 15-16. Carter's paper was titled Navigating Diaspora: Shipwrecks, Identity and the Nation. This year's conference theme was "Migration in and out of Africa: old patterns & new perspectives."
According to Carter, African migrants set out in small boats each year destined to make landfall in parts of Europe. Many disappeared leaving no trace. Their disappearance marks a silent crisis punctuated by news of shipwrecks of migrant craft in the waterways between Africa and Europe. Contemporary practices of incorporation in European democratic sovereign states have often been at odds with the claims and expressions of universalistic human rights. In recent years there has been a pronounced trend toward militarization in an effort to stem the flow of migrants testing relatively porous European borders. The failure largely of the European Union to clarify distinctions between admittance to member Nations and membership or to render transparent the procedures and processes by which permanent residence, asylum, refugee status and permission to stay are attained and contested in the case of appeal raises serious ethical concerns in the realm of political incorporation, immigration and human rights. The paper explores both the consequences of militarization and the loss of an African generation in its wake.
Carter is author of States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration (1997) and the forthcoming Navigating Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press).
According to Carter, African migrants set out in small boats each year destined to make landfall in parts of Europe. Many disappeared leaving no trace. Their disappearance marks a silent crisis punctuated by news of shipwrecks of migrant craft in the waterways between Africa and Europe. Contemporary practices of incorporation in European democratic sovereign states have often been at odds with the claims and expressions of universalistic human rights. In recent years there has been a pronounced trend toward militarization in an effort to stem the flow of migrants testing relatively porous European borders. The failure largely of the European Union to clarify distinctions between admittance to member Nations and membership or to render transparent the procedures and processes by which permanent residence, asylum, refugee status and permission to stay are attained and contested in the case of appeal raises serious ethical concerns in the realm of political incorporation, immigration and human rights. The paper explores both the consequences of militarization and the loss of an African generation in its wake.
Carter is author of States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration (1997) and the forthcoming Navigating Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press).
