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Building Walls with Words: The Securitization of Migration in the EU
by
Wed, Oct 21, 2026
6:30 PM – 8 PM (GMT+3)
AUC Tahrir Square, Hill House, Room 602 – 6th Floor
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Registration
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The Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at The American University in Cairo invites you to an engaging lecture, "Building Walls with Words: The Securitization of Migration in the EU," presented by Maria Raquel Freire.
Since the 1990s, migration across the Mediterranean has increasingly been framed not as a humanitarian issue but as an invasion, a civilizational threat or an uncontrollable emergency. Drawing on the Copenhagen School's theory of securitization and critical border studies, this talk asks how the EU has built walls with words, a process that is not just a response to migration but a productive force, manufacturing crisis and justifying tools such as border militarization, offshore detention and externalization agreements with countries like Türkiye, Libya and Tunisia.
To register, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/2uHrE5rTh5e1oKMe9
*A picture ID is required for entry.
For questions or more information, contact cmrs@aucegypt.edu.
Speakers
Maria Raquel Freire
Associate Professor in International Relations
Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Portugal.
Maria Raquel Freire, who holds a doctorate in international relations from the University of Kent, UK, is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies and a professor of international relations at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She is the coordinator of the Master Programme in International Relations—Peace, Security and Development at FEUC and vice president of the General Assembly of CES. She is currently involved in the research projects ProTest (Horizon Europe), TRACHMED and CARSI (Marie Curie Staff Exchange). Her research interests focus on peace studies, foreign policy, international security, the European Union and the former Soviet space.