Léa Lemaire took part to a conference on “International Migration in the 21st Century”, at Yeditepe University (Research and Application Center, KEKAM) in Istanbul, Turkey, on 10-11 October 2018. The conference brought together Turkish and international academics to discuss different aspects of international migration. Topics such as asylum, diaspora or repatriation were discussed. Moreover, the conference focused on various geographical spaces and historical contexts.

Léa presented a paper entitled “The relocation of refugees in the European Union: a designed failure? Insights from Malta”, based on her PhD dissertation. It dealt with relocation programs, which aim at selecting and transferring refugees from Malta to other EU member states. While representatives of NGOs and international organisations, and some academics consider relocation as a solution to the so-called 2015 “refugee crisis”, her objective was to provide a critical understanding of the relocation of refugees. Based on multi-sited fieldwork in Malta and Brussels, which combines ethnographic observations with interviews, her presentation showed that relocation programs did not meet the expectations they raised. However, given that relocation rests on a selection process, she argued that it has been designed to fail specific populations.