Panel 16: Undoing the Coloniality of Mobility Regimes, Narratives and Laws (EN)

Chairs: Aghogho Akpome (University of Zululand) & Hanaa Hakiki (European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, Berlin)

16 April, 2:30 pm | Room D110

Militarism, Environmental Ruin, and Gendered Displacement in the Global South: Postcolonial Ecofeminist Perspectives from Congo and Sudan

Hajar Taha (Hassan II University, Mohammedia)

This paper examines how militarised extractive practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan drive ecological collapse and trigger forced migration, situating these processes within the coloniality of contemporary mobility regimes. The study interrogates the entanglement of armed conflict, environmental devastation, and gendered displacement in two contexts marked by the violent legacy of colonial resource exploitation using a postcolonial ecofeminist lens.

In eastern Congo, conflict over coltan and other minerals fuels deforestation, soil erosion, and toxic contamination. It further undermines agrarian livelihoods and compels rural populations, especially women, to migrate. In Sudan, scorched-earth tactics, oil extraction, and climate-exacerbated drought converge to displace communities, intensifying gendered vulnerabilities in transit and resettlement. Across both cases, women emerge as both the most affected, mainly owing to caregiving responsibilities, socio-economic marginalization, and exposure to gender-based violence, and as key agents of resilience, preserving seeds, ecological knowledge, and cross-border care networks.

Methodologically, the paper employs mixed qualitative approaches: discourse analysis of NGO and UNHCR reports, archival media studies, and the integration of testimonies from displaced women in diaspora settings. By connecting ecological destruction to the colonial logics embedded in border regimes and migration governance, the paper challenges prevailing humanitarian narratives that depoliticize forced migration. Ultimately, it argues for mobility justice frameworks that recognize environmental degradation as a central driver of displacement, foreground gendered experiences, and dismantle the structural continuities between colonial extraction and present-day militarized ecologies.

Keywords: Postcolonial ecofeminism; militarism; environmental justice; forced migration; gendered displacement

Angolan Refugees after 1975: Postcolonial Displacement and Identity Reconstruction in Portugal

Pedro Gonçalves (FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa) & Érica Pontes (Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra)

The proclamation of Angola’s independence in 1975 marked the beginning of a prolonged civil war, generating large-scale forced displacements both within the country and across national borders. Among the multiple trajectories of exile, the migration of Angolan refugees to Portugal occupies a particularly revealing position, emerging from the interplay between post- imperial power relations, enduring colonial imaginaries, and struggles over historical memory. This case provides a paradigmatic example of how Euro- modern mobility regimes — structured by colonial legacies — differentially regulate movements between the global South and the global North, while simultaneously exposing spaces of agency and resistance on the part of those on the move. The analysis focuses on the processes of arrival and settlement of these refugees in Portugal, with particular attention to how forced migration contributed to the reconfiguration of urban spaces and the emergence of new forms of transcultural expression in the metropole. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, it brings into dialogue institutional responses and lived experiences, examining questions of integration, identity, and the negotiation of belonging within a post-imperial context. Rather than portraying refugees as passive recipients of humanitarian assistance, this study highlights their role as active agents in the creation of hybrid cultural practices shaped by transnational attachments and local dynamics. By anchoring the discussion in concrete empirical cases — such as urban reconfigurations and community practices in the outskirts of Lisbon — this analysis connects historical forced migrations to broader debates on diasporas, mobility, and transculturality in post-imperial Europe.

Keywords: Angola; refugees; civil war; forced displacement; diaspora; identity; postcolonialism

The ND and NT judgment: Rule of narrative vs the rule of law

Aghogho Akpome (University of Zululand) & Hanaa Hakiki, (European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights)

In 2015, two Black African men brought a case against Spain (ND and NT v Spain) for their summary expulsion (“pushback”) from Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the African continent, into Morocco. The case, brought before the European Court of Human Rights, challenged the expulsion under the European Convention on Human Rights and its protocols, as ratified by Spain, which prohibit collective expulsions of foreigners. This provided an opportunity for the court, once considered a champion of refugee rights, to address what from 2016 became a European systematic practice of racist, violent and extrajudicial expulsions (‘pushbacks’) against people on the move. In this paper, we focus on how the Court intended to justify its refusal to apply the ECHR for pushbacks. Instead, in a convoluted and long judgment, it constructed a new legal doctrine blaming the applicants. We analyse the judgment from the perspective of the intersection of law and narratives, focusing on law-making as a social construct that is embedded in institutional, geo-political and cultural history. We begin with a summary of the Court’s legal reasoning, contextualising it within the Court’s history and subsequent approach to border human rights violations. We then scrutinise the judgment as a literary text, paying particular attention to the historical European narratives about Africa and Africans which underpin the judgment. By so doing, we interrogate the role of narratives in law-making and question the extent to which these narratives – rather than legal reasoning – stand at the heart of the logic of the ND and NT judgment.

Keywords: narratives; laws; coloniality; borders; courts