Joint seminar on Legal Constructions of Space and Forms of Life
Friday, December 15th 2017 / 14.00 – 17.00
Antonio Marzal
Maître de Conférences à la Sorbonne & Member of FOLIE
&
Veronica Corcodel
Postdoctoral Fellow at Sciences Po & Member of FOLIE
Antonio Marzal: FOLIE and the territorial scope of application of EU law
The topic I have chosen to examine from the perspective of FOLIE is that of the territorial scope of application of EU law. At its simplest, it is the issue that arises where a situation is only partially or even tenuously connected to the European territory, or where it is connected both to the EU and the legal systems of third States. Problems in this area, like in many others, are solved by relying on universal values, by conceiving EU law as a vector for those values, and by guaranteeing its effectiveness. This means that, in principle, territoriality plays very little role. Rather than firmly grounded in a certain geography or a localised community, EU law possesses the abstract qualities of pure movement or energy: its effects are certainly felt locally, but EU law itself has no such grounding. If we take seriously, however, the ideas behind FOLIE project (that is, that EU law is necessarily local, that it is both reflective and constitutive of a way of life), it becomes possible to turn this area of the law upside down and show, not only that the question of the applicability of EU law can be alternatively understood as who is and who is out and what it means to be an insider, but furthermore that the EU law already is based on such an understanding, even if reluctantly and vaguely articulated and seeking cover under the convenient language of values, extraterritoriality and effet utile”.
Veronica Corcodel: Legally constructed migrant forms of life: Calais as a space of contested suspension
This presentation will explore the relationship between law and migrant lives through the example of the Calais camp. It will start with a reflection on how the notion of forms of life, developed mainly in philosophical and literary works, can be useful for approaching this question. Defined as a bundle of socially and culturally shaped practices that constitute – and are constituted by – ways of living, this notion puts in the forefront the issue of life possibilities. If law is to be understood as one of these practices, the idea of forms of life allows tackling the relationship between law and migrants’ projects of social and economic lives in “foreign” countries. In the context of the Calais camp, as this presentation will show, legal arrangements both consolidate the suspension of migrants’ life projects and allow contesting it. In this sense, Calais appears as a legally constructed space of contested suspension. Such a vision runs counter reductive understandings of the camp as created “outside law” or as merely oppressive.
Friday, December 15th, 2017 / 14.00 – 17.00
École de droit, Sciences Po, 13 rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris
Meeting Room (4th floor – room 410T)
IMPORTANT:
Due to security measures, access to Sciences Po buildings is restricted.
If you intend to attend the seminar, please send an email to filipe.silva@sciencespo.fr
indicating your full name. Security officers will be provided with the list of participants.
Do not forget to bring a VALID ID.