Border Enclaves: An Ethnography of a Contested Territory in Europe’s Southern Periphery. A Conversation with Dr. Laia Soto-Bermant

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Sedgewick building (SED) C168. BIG_Talk: Border Enclaves: An Ethnography of a Contested Territory in Europe’s Southern Periphery Join us September 29th, 10:30am–12:00pm, in SED C168 or via Zoom, for a conversation with Dr. Laia Soto-Bermant (University of Helsinki) about her new book, Border Enclaves: An Ethnography of a Contested Territory in Europe’s Southern Periphery (Manchester University Press, Rethinking Borders series). She will be in conversation with Franck Billé (UC Berkeley). Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, the book examines how borders are enforced, contested and inhabited in a city suspended between Africa and Europe, colonial legacies and modern regimes. Following smugglers, migrants, teachers and politicians, it traces how everyday practices and symbolic performances shape life in the enclave, and how selective visibility, who is seen and who is erased, structures authority and exclusion. Dr. Laia Soto-Bermant is a social anthropologist and Kone Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki, currently leading a four-year project on conspiracy theories and Covid-19. She holds a PhD from Oxford, has held positions at Arizona State University and the University of Helsinki, and is Editor-in-Chief of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale. Franck Billé is an anthropologist and geographer at UC Berkeley working on sovereignty, territoriality and cartography. His books include Voluminous States (2020), On the Edge: Life along the Russia-Chin