Event Date: December 2, 2026 - 11:30am to 1:30pm
Location: VNR 1050, 136 Jean-Jacques-Lussier Private, Ottawa

Presented by CIPS, the International Political Economy Network (IPEN), and the Centre on Governance

This talk aims to develop a critical lens on detention in the European Union (EU). We argue that detention has become a central, though fragmented and unevenly governed, strategy of EU asylum management, structured across a spectrum of legally differentiated yet interlinked sites. Drawing on policy analysis and semi-structured interviews in the EU, we identify three interrelated forms of detention: border externalization and deterrence; detention for sorting; and detention as refugee acceptance. Conceptually, we theorize detention governance as a spectrum of state-financed unfreedom operating across multiple levels of EU authority, shaped by interlocking financial, carceral, and deeply political instruments. We show how diverse detention sites are connected through shared governing logics that reconcile liberal and conservative tensions surrounding humanitarian assistance and questions of stability and sovereignty. This approach highlights the prioritization of public expenditure on detention, border enforcement, and migrant containment, even amid broader concerns over austerity and welfare spending. Examining this spectrum reveals the carceral logics governing migrant life from beyond EU borders to major refugee-hosting sites such as Berlin. Through this analysis, detention governance emerges as a multi-form expression of state-financed unfreedom throughout the migrant journey—an actively pursued and increasingly formalized strategy of refugee governance across EU jurisdictions since 2015.

Speakers:

Susanne Soederberg is a Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies who is cross appointed to the Department of Political Studies and Department of Sociology. Dr. Soederberg earned her doctorate from Johann-Wolfgang Goethe Frankfurt University in Germany. Prior to her appointment at Queen’s in 2004, Professor Soederberg held a tenure-track appointment in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. Dr. Soederberg has been awarded the prestigious Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professorship in Studies of Contemporary Society (2015-2016) at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies where she is undertaking research on the linkages between low-income housing, finance and social reproduction in Berlin and Dublin.

Ali Bhagat is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and at the Wilson College of Leadership and Civic Engagement at McMaster University. He is a scholar of International Political Economy focusing on migration and refugee policy. He is also the author of the book Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell Press 2024).

Chair:

Sarah E. Sharma is an international political economist investigates how we govern crucial global environmental challenges and the social, political and economic forces that shape environmental policy outcomes. Her work has been published in various academic and media outlets, including the Review of International Political Economy, International Affairs, New Political Economy, Urban Geography, Policy Options and The Conversation, amongst others. She presently is a Co-Director of Federalism and Multi-Level Governance at the Centre on Governance (Centre d’études en gouvernance, CEG). Previously, she was a co-director of the Canadian research network Réseau d’analyse stratégique (RAS) and the Chair of the Women & Inclusivity in Sustainable Energy Research (WISER) Network.