Migration and (De)coloniality: On the Entanglement of Colonial Legacies and Migrants’ Experiences

Shannon Gouppy, Ibtissame Bourhnane

2 November 2026, 12:15–14:00

Université de Neuchâtel, room D65, main building, Av. du 1er-Mars 26

Zoom link: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68352226251

The multidimensionality of the study of migrations and its link to historical legacies – including colonial ones – calls for more interpretive and historical approaches to its study and analysis. While the post-colonial perspective, for instance, gives a solid foundation for the study of the legacies of the colonial enterprise in former colonies, migration corridors and contemporary migrants’ sociological realities cannot be treated or analysed in seclusion from this overarching historical lens. In this lecture, we depart from a general understanding of the critical race and (post/de)colonial theoretical framework, which reflects a compilation of major theoretical contributions of key post-colonial thinkers such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Frantz Fanon. The lecture then moves to a practical application of this analytical framework by reflecting on the Moroccan case; this case study offers a historically grounded perspective through a historical sedimentation of the genealogy and the construction of race, and through the racial and social hierarchies institutionalised under the French colonial protectorate.

The lecture hence asks a key central question: How can we mobilise post-colonial, anti-colonial and decolonial foundations to understand the social, political, and economic configurations in contexts of migration?