XClose

UCL European Institute

Menu

Black Europe event: Diamond Ashiagbor on EU integration and European colonialism

10 December 2024, 12:00 pm–1:15 pm

A photograph of Professor Diamond Ashiagbor

Join us for a lunchtime talk in our [Black Europe] series with Professor Diamond Ashiagbor, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Uta Staiger

Location

IAS Common Ground, South Wing
Wilkins Building
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT

EU integration and EU social citizenship: Resonances, legacies, and continuities of colonialism

This paper explores European integration, in particular in the creation of the ‘single market’ and the social dimension of that market, through the lens of European colonialism. It examines the emergence of regional (EU) social and labour law against the backdrop of decolonization, arguing that the EU market integration project, and the ability to embed that market in the ‘social’, owe much to the ‘racial capitalism’ of European colonial dominance over the territory and resources of other regions. Exploring the temporal and the spatial dimensions of EU integration, a key argument is that there has been no clean break between the colonial past of the constituent member states of the European Union, and the neocolonial present of the European project.

About the Speaker

Diamond Ashiagbor

Diamond Ashiagbor is Professor of Law at the University of Kent, and also a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (Sept-Dec 2024). Her research and teaching spans labour law, equality, race and colonialism, regionalism (European Union and African Union). She has held visiting positions at Columbia Law School, Melbourne Law School, and Osgoode Hall; is a member of the editorial board of European Law Open; and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). She was awarded a British Academy / Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship for a current research project entitled ‘Reconceptualising Labour Law: Race, Legal Form and the Legacies of Colonialism’.