Un/Making (National, Imperial, EU-European) Borders
Spaces & Practices in and beyond Europe in the long 20th Century
Time: 31th August – 1st of September 2026
Venue: Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany. University Campus, Tallin 007
Organised by: Christiane Reinecke, Thea Kruse, Frederik Doktor
Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – SFB 1604 “Production of Migration” – 501120656
Preliminary Programme
Sunday, 30th August, 7.30 pm: Informal get-together for those who have already arrived
9:30 to 10:00 Coffee & Arrival
10:00 to 10:30 Welcome and Introduction
Coffee
11:00 to 13:00 Panel I: Bordering from Below? Actors and Agencies
Chair/Commentator: Florian Wagner (Erfurt)
Louise Thatcher (Bard College Berlin): “Finding Stowaways (in the Archive): Autonomy of Migration and the Histories of Bordering and Border Evasion in Early C20 White Australia".
Franziska Exeler (Freie Universität Berlin): “Smuggling, Emigration Agents, and Suspected Sexual Trafficking in the Late Imperial Russian–Austrian–Prussian Borderlands: What Counted as Irregular Border Crossings, and for Whom?”
Burak Sayım (Universität Basel): “Challenging European Imperial Borders in the Post-Ottoman Middle East: Cross-Border Revolutionaries and Forged Papers in the Interwar Years”
Lunch
14:30 to 16:00 Panel II: Documenting and Identifying: Passports and the Changing Infrastructures of Border-Making
Chair/Commentator: Sébastien Tremblay (Flensburg)
Yazid Benhadda (University of Exeter): “Inheriting a Document, Inheriting a Modern Border: the Passport and the Decolonisation of Morocco and Tunisia (1955-1962)”
Lennart Schmidt (Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam): “Making Borders Digital: Migration Control and the Rise of European Information Systems (1960s–2000s)”
Coffee
16:30 to 18:30 Panel III: Controlling Flows, Controlling People: Mobility Infrastructures, Institutions, and Practices
Chair/Commentator: Philipp Müller (Hamburg)
Carolin Liebisch-Gümüş (Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam): “Making Skies and Seas Safe for Globalization: International Organizations and the Control of Migration (The Roles of ICAO and IMO)”
Andrew Tompkins (Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau): “Agents of Socialist Integration: Customs Controls and Human Flows on the Poland-GDR Border”
Thea Kruse (EUF Flensburg / SFB 1604 Osnabrück) “(Re-)Bordering the English Channel: the Production of (Un-)Wanted Channel Crossings in the 1990s”
Conference Dinner
8:45 to 10:15 Panel IV: Unmaking Imperial Borders? Reshaping Border Regimes During and After Decolonisation
Chair/Commentator: Isabella Löhr (Berlin/Potsdam)
Frederik Doktor (EUF Flensburg / SFB 1604 Osnabrück), “Loss of State Control? Local Border Practices in Marseille and their Postimperial Reshaping after the ‘Shock of Decolonization’”
Fabio Santos (University of Copenhagen): “Doing Borders Beyond Europe Proper: De/Colonial Histories, De/Migrantisation, and the Un/Making of European Elsewheres”
Coffee
10:45 to 12:15 Panel V: Categorising Mobilities, Categorising Migrants At and Beyond the Border
Chair/Commentator: Maren Möhring (Leipzig)
Rob Waters (Queen Mary University of London): “Multi-Status Britain, beyond Subjects and Aliens”
Brigitte Le Normand (Maastricht University): “Gender in the French and German Postwar Labour Migration Regimes”
12:30 to 13:00 Final Discussion
Lunch