Senior Research Seminar with Dr Olga Demetriou (Durham University)

The Spirit of the Convention and the Letter of the Colony: Refugees and the Law in a British Overseas TerritoryDr Olga Demetriou (Durham University)

Through the legal case of refugees stranded on a British military base in Cyprus since 1998, this paper analyses how refugees may become empowered, through law, to redefine the state. I draw on discussions with litigants and their families, visits to the area, as well interviews with lawyers and other institutional actors to delineate the multiple issues around protection and state sovereignty. I argue that a conceptualisation of the relationship between refugees and states as one where refugees define states reveals forms of refugee agency that work in tandem and against mechanisms that deny protection. I explore the imbrications of modalities of sovereignty such as colonialism, exceptionalism, and diplomacy with modalities of agency such as protest, vulnerability and endurance. Being attentive to these imbrications of sovereignty and agency is an important and necessary response to current tendencies that shift the focus of protection from the substantive to the managerial, as well as to a better understanding the role of law in activism.

Please note the venue for this term's seminars is lecture theatre A, in the Arts School (https://map.cam.ac.uk/Lecture+Theatre+A#52.203448,0.119533,17).