In De Verbranders gaan we in gesprek met migranten, activisten en wetenschappers over de koloniale oorsprong van Europa's grenzen, de ongelijkheid die grenzen vandaag de dag produceren en verzet tegen Europa's grensbeleid. Hier alvast een voorproefje.


Zee en zang uit de film Asmat van Dagmawi Yimer (https://vimeo.com/114849871)

Themamuziek door David (gitaar) en Joris (drums)

Themamuziek door Allen (accordeon) en Neske (viool), naar Doina, van de Fanfare Ciocarlia

Preview

Over hoe Europa's grenzen dood produceren en hoe dat nooit los kan worden gezien van de mogelijkheden die mensen hebben tot leven.

Voor meer van Amade M'charek en kunstenaar Mohsen Lihidheb, zie de Zembla aflevering "Dromen van een begraafplaats": https://www.bnnvara.nl/zembla/artikelen/dromen-van-een-begraafplaats

llustraties door B. Carrot, o.a. uit Alle Dagen Ui, uitgegeven door Soul Food Comics. Voor meer B. Carrot zie www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws/ en www.bcarrot.nl

Grafische vormgeving door Thomas van Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast/)

Zee en zang uit de film Asmat van Dagmawi Yimer (https://vimeo.com/114849871)

Themamuziek: David (gitaar) en Joris (drums)

Themamuziek: Allen (accordeon) en Neske (viool), naar Doina van de Fanfare Ciocarlia

Afl 1: Grenzen, ecologie, kolonialisme. Met Amade M'charek (Nederlands).

On migrant illegalization, exploitation in the name of help, racism, and solidarity.

After years of fighting, Maryama was granted asylum, but, as she explains in this episode, too many of the people of We Are Here are still having to fight to survive. On Saturday October 23rd, we will join them to protest against temporary solutions and for permanent residency for all! Come join us too and show your solidarity. Start 13:00, at Javaplantsoen 17-19 in Amsterdam. See their facebook event for more information:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1096340994505282/?ref=newsfeed

lllustrations by B. Carrot, i.a. from Alle Dagen Ui, published by Soul Food Comics. For more of B. Carrot see www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws and www.bcarrot.nl

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Music: Say You Will by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 2: No one is illegal. With Maryama Omar from We Are Here (English).

In March 2021, the Italian prosecutor officially charged Sascha and others from the Iuventa Crew with “aiding and abetting illegal immigration.” They now risk up to 20 years in prison. In this episode Sascha talks to us about his political background and beliefs, the daily reality of search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, and the hallucinatory events that ultimately led to the charges pressed against him, which include espionage, in-depth surveillance, undercover operations, and media set-ups. And we talk about the criminalization of solidarity, and how we can make sure this criminalization does not stop us, but motivates us to continue to organize for a world where people can move freely. 

For more about the iuventa crew, see their website https://iuventa-crew.org and follow them on Twitter and Instagram, https://twitter.com/iuventacrew, https://www.instagram.com/iuventacrew/ 

And for more on the criminalization of solidarity, see https://www.borderline-europe.de/?l=en 

Music: Boats by Shireen Lilith, For more, see https://www.instagram.com/shireen_lilith and www.facebook.com/Shireen-Crisis-Folk-210622842669744/ 

Music: Persian Rickshaw by Caspian Hat Dance, For more, see https://www.caspianhatdance.com

lllustrations by B. Carrot, i.a. from Alle Dagen Ui, published by Soul Food Comics. For more of B. Carrot see www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws and www.bcarrot.nl

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 3: Solidarity is not a crime. With Sascha from the Iuventa crew (English).

Over de koloniale geschiedenis van migratie en migratierecht, en hoe die geschiedenis doorwerkt in het Europese grenssysteem van vandaag de dag: een systeem dat zo gebouwd is dat mensen met een Europees paspoort goedkoop, eenvoudig, en snel de wereld over kunnen reizen terwijl anderen, vooral niet-rijke en geracialiseerde mensen uit voormalig gekoloniseerde gebieden tegen worden gehouden en als ze toch willen reizen, geïllegaliseerd worden en noodgedwongen op gammele bootjes stappen.

llustraties door B. Carrot, o.a. uit Alle Dagen Ui, uitgegeven door Soul Food Comics. Voor meer B. Carrot zie www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws/ en www.bcarrot.nl

Grafische vormgeving door Thomas van Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast/)

Themamuziek: David (gitaar) en Joris (drums)

Themamuziek: Allen (accordeon) en Neske (viool), naar Doina van de Fanfare Ciocarlia

Afl 4: Migratierecht, kolonialisme, 'ras'. Met Thomas Spijkerboer (Nederlands).

On the Dutch deportation regime and the violence and racism on which it builds. And on what people working for the deportation agency do to mitigate the feeling of contributing to the violence and racism.   

Music by Kostas Bezos

lllustrations by B. Carrot, i.a. from Alle Dagen Ui, published by Soul Food Comics. For more of B. Carrot see www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws and www.bcarrot.nl

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 5: Deportation and the banality of evil. With Barak Kalir (English).

Saied Al Karim arrived to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam in 2016, applied for asylum, was rejected, and subsequently moved to an immigration detention center. He was kept there for fourteen months, after which he was put on the street because he was deemed 'undeportable'. Many months later, he was granted asylum. In this episode, he shares his insights on the Dutch detention and deportation regime and the people that work for it, and talks about his efforts to resist the system from inside the prison. 

For more on immigration detention in the Netherlands, see www.stichtinglos.nl and www.meldpuntvreemdelingendetentie.nl. And listen to episode 5 with Barak Kalir. 

For more about Saied's experience inside immigration detention, see the beautiful graphic novel Alle Dagen Ui by B. Carrot, published by Soul Food Comics, and for more by B. Carrot, see www.bcarrot.nl or www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws

Music: Ya Habibi Ta'ala by Lynn Adib and Zeid Hamdan

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 6: Inside immigration detention. With Saied Al Karim (English).

Over de reeks van obstakels die Nederland opwierp om er voor te zorgen dat Seawatch niet meer onder Nederlandse vlag zou varen, in de context van een op Europees niveau gecoördineerde strategie om zeenoodredding door ngo's en activisten zo moeilijk mogelijk te maken.

Muziek: Heading on back to the the hills van The Bucket Boyz. Voor meer, zie https://thebucketboyz.bandcamp.com/

llustraties door B. Carrot, o.a. uit Alle Dagen Ui, uitgegeven door Soul Food Comics. Voor meer B. Carrot zie www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws/ en www.bcarrot.nl

Grafische vormgeving door Thomas van Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast/)

Themamuziek: David (gitaar) en Joris (drums)

Themamuziek: Allen (accordeon) en Neske (viool), naar Doina van de Fanfare Ciocarlia

Afl 7: Hoe Nederland van Seawatch afkwam. Met Anne van Seawatch (Nederlands).

Over de grenzen tussen “wij” en “zij” die door het tegen elkaar afzetten van gender- en seksualiteitsnormen gecreëerd werden. 

Saskia vertelt hoe die grens in de Nederlandse koloniën en tijdens de dekolonisatie tastbaar werd gemaakt via het personen- en familierecht, dat bepaalde wie er wel en niet Nederlander was en hoe je Nederlander kon worden en hoe die grens later en tot op de dag vandaag tastbaar wordt gemaakt via het familieherenigingsbeleid, dat bepaalt wie er wel en niet partners en familie van elkaar zijn, en dus voor hereniging in aanmerking komen. 

llustraties door B. Carrot, o.a. uit Alle Dagen Ui, uitgegeven door Soul Food Comics. Voor meer B. Carrot zie www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws/ en www.bcarrot.nl

Grafische vormgeving door Thomas van Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast/)

Themamuziek: David (gitaar) en Joris (drums)

Themamuziek: Allen (accordeon) en Neske (viool), naar Doina van de Fanfare Ciocarlia

Afl 8: Gender, seksualiteit, grenzen. Met Saskia Bonjour (Nederlands).

Nowadays, states have a monopoly to control migration. And because this is the case, we tend to think of this monopoly as a natural and defining element of state sovereignty, as something that has been around for as long as states have existed. Radhika argues that this is not the case. State control over migration is only a recent aspect of the state. 

Our conversation today roughly follows the arc of Radhika’s 2018 book, Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State. In it, she looks at Indian colonial migrations from about 1834, when Britain abolished slavery, up until the First World War. Radhika explains how the movements of these Indians was crucial to the emergence of the first forms of state control of mobility. In other words, the regulation of colonial migrations played a critical part in bringing about borders. Throughout the conversation, Radhika emphasizes the entanglements of the colonial state and the modern state, as well as the crucial role race and racisms played in shaping the passport inequality we know today. 

Book: Mongia, Radhika (2018). Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State.

Music: Hüseyni Peşrev (Lavtacı Andon) by Michalis Kouloumis (Violin) and Baha Yetkin (Turkish Oud)

lllustrations by B. Carrot, i.a. from Alle Dagen Ui, published by Soul Food Comics. For more of B. Carrot see www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws and www.bcarrot.nl

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 9: A colonial history of the passport. With Radhika Mongia (English).

In this episode, we talk to Deanna & Hela (Alarm Phone) about the current situation in the Central Mediterranean Sea, and the work Alarm Phone does in that context. Deanna & Hela explain how European coordination is increasingly directed, not at rescuing people, but at preventing people from being rescued and being brought to Europe, resulting in deaths at sea and pushbacks to Libya.

Music by Caspian Hat Dance - U rusciu te lu mare

lllustrations by B. Carrot, i.a. from Alle Dagen Ui, published by Soul Food Comics. For more of B. Carrot see www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws and www.bcarrot.nl

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 10: Coordinated death in the Mediterranean Sea. With Deanna & Hela from Alarm Phone (English).

Our guest today is Rosa from the Alarm Phone. We talk to Rosa about the situation at the Turkish – Greek border. In the past few years, Greek authorities have increasingly pushed back people on the move, using more and more violence. This is happening both at sea, where the Greek coast guard forces people back into Turkish waters, and on the land border, where the Greek border police detains people before driving them back to Turkey. Rosa explains how important the videos and testimonies of people on the move are in documenting these violent practices. She also talks about attempts by authorities to prevent people on the move from doing this important work of counter-mapping.

Music: Kaigomai, Kaigomai by Stella Haskil and Takis Mpinis

lllustrations by B. Carrot, i.a. from Alle Dagen Ui, published by Soul Food Comics. For more of B. Carrot see www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws and www.bcarrot.nl

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 11: Counter-mapping pushbacks. With Rosa from Alarm Phone (English).

This is our second episode with Barak Kalir. In this episode, we talk about Barak's research into deportation in Spain. We talk about the organizational culture of the Spanish police and their focus on deporting what they refer to as "foreign criminals." We talk about the so-called tragedy of Tarajal, and why we should really refer to this event as a racist attack. And we talk about the role of NGOs in implementing "voluntary" returns, and what voluntary really means in this context.

And finally, we talk about Barak’s concept "departheid." How it helps us think about the colonial roots of borders, how it points to how access to mobility is structurally racialized, and how it draws attention to the forms of racism people encounter as they move through borders in their daily lives.

Ep 12: Deportation, racism, departheid. With Barak Kalir (English).

In de aflevering vandaag spreken we met Joyce en Sinne. Joyce en Sinne zetten zich al jaren actief in als supporters van Wij Zijn Hier, een groep mensen die sinds 2012 door Amsterdam trekt om collectief te protesteren tegen het Nederlandse vreemdelingenbeleid. Dit is deel 1 van ons gesprek. Vanaf volgende week kun je luisteren naar deel 2.

We spreken over de eerste jaren van Wij Zijn Hier, van de Notweg tot aan de Vluchtgarage. Joyce en Sinne vertellen hoe Wij Zijn Hier tot stand kwam, waarom kraken door de jaren heen de enige manier bleek om het protest van de groep door te laten gaan en de groep bij elkaar te houden, hoe de gemeente Amsterdam onder voormalig burgemeester van der Laan op die verschillende gekraakte panden en protesten heeft gereageerd, en over de verdeel en heers politiek die van het begin af aan met de groep vanuit het rijk en de gemeente gespeeld werd.

Afl 13: Grenzen, kraken, solidariteit. Met Joyce & Sinne - deel 1 (Nederlands).

We talk to Sami about illegalization in the Netherlands, and about the Landelijk Vreemdelingen Voorziening, a temporary shelter that offers no solutions, because people are being deported against their will, or, if they cannot be deported, end up on the street again. At the moment, politicians are debating whether or not the LVV should continue until after it’s initial period of one and a half year. In the meantime, people are being put on the street.  So, Sami and a few of his comrades decided to start the group “We Are Still Here”. Together, they are saying loud and clear that it is time to end temporary solution and to provide permanent residency permits for all. If you’d like to know more, and/or get involved, check out https://permanentverblijf.org/

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion) and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 16: We are still here. With Sami Tsegaye (English).

Jazie is activist en strijd sinds 2020 als fractievoorzitter van BIJ1 in de gemeenteraad in Amsterdam, onder andere tegen het algemene ontmoedigingsbeleid dat er op gericht is om het voor niet-rijke en geracialiseerde mensen uit voormalige koloniën zo moeilijk mogelijk te maken om naar Nederland te komen en hier een leven op te bouwen. Dat ontmoedigen gebeurt vooral door steeds selectiever grensbeleid en de koppelingswet die sinds 1998 van kracht is en verblijfstatus aan toegang tot legaal werk en overheidsvoorzieningen koppelt. 

In de aflevering vertelt Jazie over hoe dat ontmoedigingsbeleid er in de praktijk uitziet en welke mogelijkheden de gemeente Amsterdam zou hebben om tegen het rijk in te gaan. Hij stelt bijvoorbeeld voor dat de gemeente haar eigen opvang regelt, dus een opvang die niet gekoppeld is aan het landelijke terugkeerbeleid, en om geillegaliseerden toegang te geven tot Amsterdamse onderwijsinstellingen. Ten slotte benadrukt hij hoe belangrijk juist buitenparlementaire politiek is in het teweeg brengen van verandering. 

NB: de opname voor deze aflevering vonden plaats op 1 juli 2021. Tussen toen en het moment van publiceren is er veel veranderd, zowel mondiaal als in de lokale politiek. 

llustraties door B. Carrot, o.a. uit Alle Dagen Ui, uitgegeven door Soul Food Comics. Voor meer B. Carrot zie www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws/ en www.bcarrot.nl

Grafische vormgeving door Thomas van Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast/)

Themamuziek: David (gitaar) en Joris (drums)

Themamuziek: Allen (accordeon) en Neske (viool), naar Doina van de Fanfare Ciocarlia

Afl 17: Activisme in de gemeenteraad. Met Jazie Veldhuyzen (Nederlands).

Our guest today is Nandita Sharma. Nandita is a professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii and an active member of several social movements, including the No Borders movement and movements struggling for the planetary commons. 

In our conversation today, we talk about Nandita's recent book Home Rule: National sovereignty and the separation of natives and migrants (2020).

In this book, she profoundly questions the idea that humanity can be divided up into nations, and that each nation can claim a particular place on this earth and demarcate it as theirs. As countless historical and contemporary examples show, Nandita explains, such claims can always be mobilized against other people who are seen not to be native, and who therefore can have their rights removed, be excluded, expelled or even exterminated. 

We also talk about the hardening of nationalisms across the political spectrum and the need to organize for a world that is profoundly about non-exclusion. As climate catastrophe intensifies, people are going to be moving for their lives at a scale that is unprecedented. How are we going to transform the way that we respond to such movements, so that we don’t simply accept mass death at the world’s borders? As Nandita argues, it truly is a matter of survival that we learn to imagine ourselves as a political community on a planetary level. The dismantling of borders, Nandita argues, is an essential step in our struggle toward a decolonization worth fighting for.

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion) and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 18: No Borders & A decolonization worth fighting for. With Nandita Sharma (English).

Our guest today is Polly Pallister-Wilkins. We talk to Polly about humanitarian borderwork. Polly came up with this term to point to the complicated relationship between violent mobility injustice and the life-saving rescue efforts that occur in response. What does it mean when humanitarianism is the main response to death and suffering at the border? What lines can be drawn between today’s humanitarian borders, colonialism and white supremacy?

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion) and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 19: Humanitarian borders. With Polly Pallister-Wilkins (English).

In our conversation today, we talk to Luke de Noronha about his book Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica. Meant as a contribution to the collective struggle against racism and deportation, the book tells the life stories of four men who grew up in the UK, were deported to Jamaica following criminal conviction, and now struggle to survive and rebuild their lives in the Caribbean. 

We start the conversation talking about Luke’s process of conducting research for this book. We talk about his friendship with the four men he writes about, and what this friendhip meant – and continues to mean - for his work as a researcher. 

We also talk about Jamaica, the legacies of slavery, colonialism and ongoing neocolonialism that explain Jamaica’s relative position to the UK, and the immense amount of ignorance on the effects of these legacies in the European nation-states we speak from. 

We end our conversation discussing Luke’s forthcoming book on border abolition, called ‘against borders: the case for abolition’ which he wrote together with Gracie Mae Bradley. In it, Luke and Gracie argue we must transform society and our relationships to one another, and build a world in which everyone has the freedom to move and to stay.

Ep 20: Deporting Black Britons. With Luke de Noronha (English).

In this episode of de Verbranders, we talk to Gracie Mae Bradley about a book she co-wrote with Luke de Noronha, called “Against Borders: The Case for Abolition”. In it, they draw inspiration from prison abolitionism and the black feminist politics that shape it, and they bring that body of thought and practice to the work of organising against borders.

We talk about the harm borders do, the hierarchies they produce, and the importance of dismantling them. And we talk about how prison abolitionism teaches us to do this work of dismantling alongside the equally important work of building the worlds we want to live in, with the ultimate goal of shrinking borders into non-existence.

We also ask Gracie about what it is she loves, and the kinds of worlds she dreams of and is fighting for. We asked her to bring three pieces of art, which we weave into the conversation. 

Enjoy!



Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

During the episode, we listen to Philip Glass' Dance No. 4, and Gracie reads from Alexis Pauline Gumbs' "Undrowned" and from a stunning poem she wrote, called "On Ending"

Ep 21: Border abolition & black feminism. With Gracie Mae Bradley (English).

In de aflevering vandaag spreken we met Roos Ykema, van MiGreat. MiGreat werd vorig jaar bekend door de hulp die ze boden in ter Apel, toen honderden mensen noodgedwongen op het veld voor het aanmeldcentrum voor asielzoekers moesten slapen. Daar zag Roos hoe op allerlei manieren en door allerlei beslissingen een crisis werd gecreëerd, en hoe vervolgens die crisis uitnodigde tot nieuwe harde maatregelen. 

Verder hebben we het met Roos over haar politieke ontwikkeling, over hoe noodhulp gebruikt kan worden door het grenssysteem, en ook, hoe het een springplank kan zijn voor verzet en systeemverandering. 

Ten slotte spreken we over het politieke werk dat MiGreat doet, zoals rechtszaken aanspannen samen met mensen in asielzoekerscentra, het organiseren van demonstraties, en het opzetten van politieke campagnes. 

En we luisteren naar Mississippi Goddam van Nina Simone, naar Don’t Hurt Yourself van Beyonce, en naar een prachtige speech van spoken-word artist Lev Avitan: https://levavitan.nl/

Zoals altijd zijn we benieuwd naar jullie gedachten! Je kunt een reactie achterlaten op onze Instagram of Twitter, of ons een mailtje sturen naar deverbranderspodcast@gmail.com

Graphic design: Thomas, van Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)
Thema muziek: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)
Thema muziek: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin) – Doina van Fanfare Ciocarlia

Afl 22: De gecreëerde crisis in Ter Apel. Met Roos Ykema van MiGreat (Nederlands).

Our guest today is Hidaya Nampiima, co-founder and spokesperson of Amsterdam City Rights, an organisation of people living in Amsterdam with and without the right papers.

What is Amsterdam like if you don’t have a BSN number? When you are shut out from healthcare, schooling, housing, education, legal work, and political participation? Hidaya talks about becoming undocumented and being pushed onto the streets, to then pick up her pieces and find her voice by challenging injustice. 

There is no such thing as being undocumented, she explains. It’s the system that creates undocumented people.

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

During the episode, we listen to two pieces by Bobi Wine:
- his song Freedom
- a speech he gave at the 2022 Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy

Ep 23: Amsterdam's most undocumented famous person. With activist Hidaya Nampiima (English).

Our guests in this episode are Bridget Anderson, Cynthia Wright, and Nandita Sharma. We speak to them about their editorial called “Why no Borders”, which they published in 2008. In it, they distill the scholarship on borders at the time, in order to draw the conclusion that we should get rid of borders.  

Taking the editorial as our starting point, we speak about collaboration, and the joy of working together with people with whom we share a politics, and a sense of humor. And we talk about no borders as a practical political project, that is carried out in the here and now, by all of us who refuse to conform to nationalized borders. 

Bridget, Cynthia, and Nandita bring two pieces of music to the episode: No One Is Illegal, by Renovatio, and Absolute Power, by Akala. 

We recorded this episode right after the Maritime Solidarities conference that brought Bridget, Cynthia, and Nandita to Amsterdam in September of 2023. This was a few weeks before the Israeli state took the Hamas attack on the 7th of October as an opportunity to escalate the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza and the Westbank. We don’t speak about Palestine in the episode. But, as we publish this in January 2024, we want to state that the freedom dreams we express in this conversation apply to Palestine in Particular. And right now, we must act. We must reject this total destruction of life. We must resist the occupation, we must resist settler colonialism, and we must resist ethnic-nationalist states. And, we must refuse to lose, as Bridget puts it in this episode. 

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion) and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Ep 24: Why no borders. With Bridget Anderson, Cynthia Wright, and Nandita Sharma (English).

Our guest today is Ghassan Hage, a professor of anthropology at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Today, we talk with Ghassan, not about Europe’s borders, but about Palestine, and the intensification of the destruction of life in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli state and the powers that support it.

We recorded our conversation a few weeks ago, in January 2024. As I record this introduction, I am struck by how difficult it is to find words that speak to the moment we are in. We are witnessing military attacks of unimaginable brutality, with countless bodies still to be found under the rubble. Alongside this obliteration of Palestinian life, we see the destruction of the conditions of possibility for life, with the bombing of water wells, tanks, greenhouses, food depots, ports, fishing boats, hospitals, schools, and bakeries. 

At the same time, as Ghassan points out, this violence is not new, but an intensification of the structural, settler colonial violence inflicted upon the Palestinians for the past 76 years and more. We must pause and reflect on the histories that made it possible for Gaza to become the place it is today, a place where Israel can cut off the supply of water, food and electricity to Gaza, turning hunger and thirst into weapons of war. As Ghassan points out, violence is inherent in the very existence of Gaza.

Where does the legitimacy of such violence come from? How do we accept living in a world where it is normalized?

Ghassan identifies the root of the problem as the virtual absence of the very thought of negotiating one’s existence with others, creating the fantasy in Israel that supremacy over everyone is possible. This fantasy is fueled by a frightening racism that makes it such that Palestinians can be treated as if their death is meaningless.

In the episode, Ghassan describes Israel as an ethno-racial state and as a meta-colony, a colonialism of all colonial powers. This means responsibility lies not only with the Israeli government but also with the meta-colonial powers that make this destruction possible, in the form of massive military aid and diplomatic support. And we must dig deeper, and think about the global infrastructures in place that provide the materials and cover necessary to sustain this onslaught and find ways to challenge it. 

We close the episode with a reflection on the future. Israel as an ethno-racial state, Ghassan asserts, is going to come to an end. The question is what kind of an end. Tragically, with massacres and counter-massacres? Or through a negotiated mode of existence where everyone can live together? Let us work towards the latter.

In the episode, we play a clip of Refaat Alareer, the writer, poet, professor, and activist, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on the 6th of December 2023, along with several members of his family.

Refaat was a professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. He also co-founded the We Are Not Numbers project, which provided writing workshops for young Palestinians.

We close the episode with a recital of one of Refaat’s poems, titled, ‘If I must die, let it become a tale’. It became widely shared and recited at protests all over the world after he was killed. The recital we use is read by Peter Griffin and can be found here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0zYDME9oaw

Ep 25: Palestine. With Ghassan Hage (English).

In this episode, we speak to Miriam Matthiessen, who takes us to the world of shipping, through the phenomenon of so-called Abandoned Seafarers. As it happens, because of the way in which the shipping industry is organized, ship owners sometimes have an incentive to abandon their ships, and the crew on it. Formally, a ship and its crew are considered abandoned when the ship owner does not pay wages, or fails to provide adequate supplies for two months, but in practice, abandonments carry on for many months, and even years.
 
Miriam’s own entry point into this is her work for Abandoned Seafarer’s Map, which was created by Eliza Ader, and which Eliza and Miriam now maintain together with Jacob Bolton. This map uses databases by the International Labor Organization, the ILO, and the International Maritime Organization, the IMO, to show where and how often abandonments take place. These databases structure what the map does and does not show, but either way, by logging case after case, you’ll learn what kind of vessels typically get abandoned, and how nationality structures who gets abandoned, and how an abandonment then subsequently unfolds. 

In this episode, Miriam shares the lessons that she learned, while also bringing abandonments to live, by describing the situations seafarers may find themselves in, and the effects that abandonments may have on their extended families. 

Throughout the conversation, Miriam references the book Sweatshops at Sea, by Leon Fink, as well as the work of anthropologists Johanna Markkula on the labor of Filipino Seafarers, and that of economist Hercules Haralambides on container shipping, ports, and global logistics. She also references Jacob Bolton’s dissertation, parts of which he has now published in his article Supply Nets: The Logics of Seafarer Abandonment 
We end the episode with a conversation on the value of staying with an issue for a prolonged period of time, the need to create counter-hegemonic infrastructures that we can actually maintain, and the need to recognize such maintenance work as making possible the work of trying to change everything. 

We recorded this in April 2024. So, as we speak about the structural violence inflicted upon seafarers, and the total disregard of their lives, we are thinking of mass murdering of Palestinians by the same powers that be. And when we speak about wanting to change everything, this includes ending the illegal occupation, and the incarceration of Palestinians in open air prisons. 

Enjoy listening


Ep 26: Abandoned seafarers. With Miriam Matthiessen (English).

Today, we have two guests: Marcus Rediker, a distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburg, and Nandita Sharma, a professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii. 

Marcus Rediker has spent a lifetime studying oceans rather than lands, immersing himself in the worlds of sailors, pirates, and the enslaved. As he explains in the episode, it was the labor of seafaring people that knitted together the continents, enabling the rise of global capitalism. Yet these people—brought together on ships and in ports—not only generated immense profits for the wealthy; they also developed what he calls “projects of their own,” often in opposition to the interests of rulers. This self-activity of ordinary people across the Atlantic lies at the heart of his work.

We then turn to The Many-Headed Hydra, a book Marcus co-authored with Peter Linebaugh in 2000. In it, Marcus and Peter use the metaphor of the Hydra and Hercules to connect revolutionary struggles and counter-revolutionary efforts across centuries and continents. In The Many-Headed Hydra, radical religious groups struggling against enclosures in 17th-century England appear alongside, and interlinked with, the uprisings of enslaved people that swept through the Caribbean and the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries. Time and again, we see that mobility is essential for capital accumulation. But it also emerges as a problem for those in power once people start “projects of their own,” prompting intense repression and efforts to fracture revolutionary coalitions. One of these technologies of division, Marcus explains, is citizenship.

Marcus’s work has much to offer those of us who struggle against borders today. As Nandita explains in the second part of the episode, borders and legal status divide us from one another. As vital resources continue to be extracted and privatized, and investments in technologies of war increase, what does it mean to practice a politics radically oriented toward life? How do we strengthen our connections to one another? How do we build the body of the Hydra so that our movements interlink and regenerate? These are some of the questions we discuss.

We recorded this discussion in October 2024, as the Israeli state continues to kill and starve people in Gaza on an unimaginable scale, its onslaught now also reaching deeper into the West Bank and Lebanon. We must continue to do whatever we can to stop this mass killing, to resist the ongoing expropriation of people from their lands, and to resist the border regimes that trap those who want to leave.

At the end of the conversation, Marcus and Nandita offer hope at a time that does not always seem very hopeful. People all over the world live and love in ways that reach far beyond the orders imposed on us—and they do so under the most difficult and unjust of circumstances. Something in these radical visions of freedom, in these struggles for life, practised in different times and distant places, connects us to one another. This reminds us of something simple, something we already know: that we all breathe in the common wind.


Ep 27: Hydra rising. With Marcus Rediker & Nandita Sharma (English).

Our guest is Manja Petrovska, a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam and the Université libre de Bruxelles. 

We start our conversation today in the Balkans. Before her PhD, Manja spent five years supporting people travelling through the Balkans to Europe’s more affluent northwest, including at the Macedonian-Greek border and in Bosnia. 

Witnessing the intense violence that Croatian, Greek, Macedonian, and other police forces inflicted on people on the move, she increasingly started questioning who governs and funds this violence. This led her to focus on the International Organization for Migration, or the IOM.

From this five-year engagement, Manja co-authored a report from this five-year engagement, titled Repackaging Imperialism: The EU-IOM Border Regime in the Balkans, published by the Transnational Institute. Although the report’s other authors are not featured in this episode, everything we discuss related to the report is based on their work as well, so special thanks to Nidžara Ahmetašević, Sophie-Anne Bisiaux, and Lorenz Naegeli, as well as Niamh Ni Bhriain, who was the report’s main editor.

As the report lays out, while the IOM portrays itself as a neutral broker and knowledge center on migration, it is, in fact, an active implementer of particular states’ border policies, bolstering police, border guards, and private contractors known to commit atrocities. Most IOM funding comes from affluent states that can directly commission projects, which the IOM then implements in regions far from its primary funders. 

What emerges from the conversation is a European Union border regime that extends its influence into the Balkans through the IOM, funding violence that northwestern European states can then distance themselves from by mobilizing racist depictions of brutality as always something occurring in various elsewheres. From the perspective of people living in the region, this is not a new phenomenon but rather one that echoes the efforts of past empires that sought to shape what we now call the Balkans. Hence the report’s title: Repackaging Imperialism. 

In addition to affecting the lives of people on the move, this regime is also leading to a remilitarization of borders in a region still recovering from war and genocide.

We then move to discussing Manja’s current PhD project. As part of this project, she has recently attended a number of border technology fairs, which are marketplaces where security companies showcase their ideas for border security, with government officials as their clients. Manja takes us into a world where cowboy hats, raffles, and rampant alcohol consumption are used to aid in the selling of heartbeat monitors, document scanners, and weapons—illustrating how absurdly and soul-crushingly removed the worlds of weapons sales are from the people whose lives these weapons affect.

Finally, Manja recounts her own encounter with border enforcement. After leaving one of the last security fairs she attended, she was administratively detained and taken to immigration detention in Belgium. There, she met and tried to support many others who were in a much worse situation than she was, mainly people from other Balkan states and Palestinians.

We end the conversation by reflecting once again on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the need to resist the brutal slaughter, starvation, displacement, and land theft of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state. We feel pain at this destruction of life. Weapons companies, Manja explains, profit, not only from causing mass death but also from surveilling, governing, and dividing people when displaced, once again showing us that our struggles are deeply interconnected. 
 


Ep 28: Border imperialism in the Balkans. With Manja Petrovska (English).

In this episode, we speak to Rebecca Yeo, about her recent book Disabling Migration Control. In it, Rebecca draws on her many years of organizing within the disabled people’s movement and against borders, and more specifically on her engagement with disabled people in the asylum system in the UK, to argue that borders are disabling. People with existing impairments are further disabled by the restrictions of the immigration system.  And these also create new impairments, particularly high levels of mental distress.  

Rebecca draws on those years of organizing and engagement to explore what we can learn from each other across movements, what it takes to truly be in solidarity with one another, and how we might collectively resist, and disable, borders. 

To capture her politics, and the spirit in which she wrote her book, Rebecca brings a recording of  the song El Pueblo, Unido, Jamás Será Vencido to the episode, because indeed, The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated.   And she brings the voices of two of her interlocutors, who tell us how navigating the asylum system is a 'constant battle', and how that 'makes you lose your mind.'

The work of resisting such a system is collective, and throughout the book, and in the episode, Rebecca mentions the people and collectives she has been working with. One of them is community artist Andrew Bolton, with whom Rebecca collaborated several times to create murals, together with disabled people across different communities. The murals are reproduced in the book, and you can find them, and learn more about them on www.disabilitymurals.org.uk/about.php

Currently, amongst many other things, Rebecca is working to foster shared learning, solidarity, and collectively resistance through the Disability and Migration Network (DAMN). This episode was recorded in January 2025, and at the time, Rebecca and others at DAMN and the DPAC Crip Tank were planning a conference called DAMN Borders! The conference is fully booked but you can  learn more about the work of DAMN and get information about future events on https://disability-migration.org.uk/network

Ep 29: Disabling migration control. With Rebecca Yeo (English).

In this episode, Shahram Khosravi, Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, reflects on a lifetime of theorizing from outside the law, and his ongoing urge to create otherwise. 

When Shahram talks about theorizing from outside the law, he is not using a metaphor, he is referring to his experiences growing up Bakhtiari, and the refusal of his people to be dominated by colonial powers, whether in Tehran, or European. Shahram also talks about being Young and Defiant in Tehran, to name one of his books, and about crossing borders as a so-categorized Illegal Traveler, to name his auto-ethnography, or auto-theory of borders. And, he talks about refusing modes of knowledge production that are hostile to him and his people. As Shahram explains, coming from Indigenous People, such refusals are not about negation, but rather about creation, and walking in the fog of the unknown 

At the time of this recording, in June 2025, Israel and the United States were bombing Iran, putting people outside of the law, again. In the episode, we take this moment to reflect on how deep we are falling, and how dark the times are, in which we are again witnessing genocide in the name of freedom, human rights, and democracy. But, we also talk about how we can build on the movements that came before us, and from other places, to fight these dark times.

And, in this spirit, we listen to music that transports into those other worlds. We listen to Aida Shahghasemi, who sings the song Gole Bavineh, taking us to the Bakhtiari world of Shahram’s youth. We then listen to Parvin, who sings the song Ghoghaye Setargan, which carries different Iranian revolutions in it. Finally, we listen to Soheil Nafisi, who sings Nima Yushij’s poem Ay Adamha, in which a person drowning in the sea cries out to a festive crowd on the shore and the old world they represent, demanding to be seen, and demanding a liveable world. 

Enjoy listening. 


Ep 30: Outside the law. With Shahram Khosravi (English).

In this episode, we talk with Rex Osa and Aino Korvensyrjä about what it means to be in solidarity with people who self-organize against encampment, isolation, and deportation. In doing so, they take us to the struggles that took place in southern Germany’s large asylum and deportation camps in 2017 and 2018—struggles that continued in the following years.

Self-organizing, as Rex explains, is the ability of people who are affected by structural violence to organize themselves and to be part of the decision-making process in struggles for their dignity and liberation. What does practical solidarity with people facing state violence require? How do you organize together with the people most affected in a way that centers their dignity? And what is the importance of archiving our struggles from below?

While we interview Aino and Rex, many people were—and still are—part of the organizing they speak of. We’d like to shout out everyone who fought in the camps, starting with the people living in Bamberg, Donauwörth, Deggendorf, and Ellwangen who resisted their isolation and deportation. We also want to acknowledge the groups and individuals who supported them, including Aktion Bleiberecht, the Bavarian Refugee Council, Justizwatch, the Campaign for the Victims of Racist Police Violence, International Women Space, and all of the lawyers who stand in solidarity with people in struggle. We also want to thank Afrique-Europe-Interact, migration-control.info, and the Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh for documenting and challenging Euro-African deportation cooperation, border externalization, and racist police brutality and criminalization in Germany. Finally, a special shout-out as well to The VOICE Refugee Forum and the Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants, two self-organized groups that have been important in developing the methods of organizing and the anticolonial critiques discussed in the episode.

The audio clips we play can be found on www.cultureofdeportation.org, a collective that Aino and Rex founded, initially together with Claudio Feliziani.

The interview we play with Yusupha Jarboh was shot by Kin Chui together with Rex in The Gambia and Sierra Leone.

If you would like to support people after they’ve been deported, consider supporting the Safe House for Deported Persons in Lagos, which Rex is involved with:
https://refugees4refugees.org/en/2025/11/28/return-reintegration-illusion-of-an-eu-moral-for-solidarity/

For an overview of Aino’s research, visit:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aino-Korvensyrjae


Ep 31: Break isolation. With Rex Osa & Aino Korvensyrjä (English).

De Verbranders is een podcast over Europa's grenzen en verzet ertegen. We gaan in gesprek met migranten, activisten en wetenschappers over de koloniale oorsprong van grenzen en de ongelijkheid die grenzen vandaag de dag produceren. 

Illustraties door B. Carrot, o.a. uit Alle Dagen Ui, uitgegeven door Soul Food Comics. Voor meer B. Carrot zie www.instagram.com/bcarrotdraws/ en www.bcarrot.nl

Grafische vormgeving door Thomas van Dark Roast (https://www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast/)

Themamuziek: David (gitaar) en Joris (drums)

Themamuziek: Allen (accordeon) en Neske (viool), naar Doina van de Fanfare Ciocarlia

Financiële ondersteuning: Van Vollenhoven Instituut en het Instituut voor Culturele Antropologie en Ontwikkelingssociologie van de Universiteit Leiden, het Leids Universiteits Fonds, en de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek

De Verbranders Podcast

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