On the 11th of November 2020, from 9 – 11am (CET), Dr Estella Carpi, Southern Responses to Displacement Research Associate, will present ‘The Politics of Crisis-Making: Neither for Rights, Nor for Needs’ at The University of Melbourne.
The event is open access and you can join here: Event access link (Microsoft Teams)
Throughout modern history, the politics of crisis-making that accompanies volatile contexts has inhibited the capacity to produce effective changes in matters of migration and borders. It has also made us believe that forced migrations inevitably imply a “crisis”, while the story is far more complicated.
Taking Lebanon as a leading example, Dr Carpi will demonstrate how a western-centric understanding of humanitarianism prevents us from capturing how the lives of different refugee groups are enmeshed in contexts where humanitarian and welfare regimes overlap; and how refugees understand themselves in response to crisis management.
Dr Carpi will particularly focus on the politicization of aid, the ‘ethnicization’ of needs and services, and the socio-moral distances between aid providers and recipients in different Lebanese areas.
The presentation will draw on key themes covered in Dr Carpi’s recent publication in Italian, Specchi Scomodi. Etnografia delle Migrazioni Forzate nel Libano Contemporaneo (Mimesis, 2019), and her manuscript ‘The Politics of Crisis- Making. Forced Displacement and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon’ and her current research for the Southern Responses to Displacement research project.
If you have any queries about the event contact Dr Elena Giacomelli elena.giacomelli4@unibo.it
Image: An ‘informal tented settlement’ in Bekaa valley, Lebanon. Russell Watkins, Department for International Development (DFID) (c) Creative Commons
Southern Responses to Displacement 
Leave a Reply