HomeInternment Europe: From Colonial Practices to Contemporary Control

Internment Europe: From Colonial Practices to Contemporary Control

« Internment Europe » : Des pratiques coloniales aux stratégies de contrôle contemporain

«Internment Europe»: De las prácticas coloniales a las estrategias de control contemporáneas

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Published on Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Abstract

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This workshop aims to critically rethink the concept of internment in its various forms, tracing its development from colonial practices to today's 'detention archipelagos' in migration regimes. By the term “internment” - therefore declined in the plural - we mean all forms of imprisonment, forced segregation such as confinement, containment, encampment, concentration, etc. that aim to remove/enclose individuals or entire populations in prisons, camps, places otherwise adapted for this purpose.

Announcement

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Tours, 26–28 November 2025

Organization

The conference is organized by the international research network INTERCOL – The Colonial “Great Confinement”: Forms of Internment within Coloniality, which currently brings together seven institutional partners and about ten individual researchers. It is funded by the University of Tours and the international consortium Neolaia (https://neolaiacampus.eu/).

The scientific coordinators of the conference are Francesco Correale (CNRS), Hélène Bertheleu (University of Tours), both at UMR 7324 CITERES in Tours, and Andrea Teti (University of Salerno).

Argument

This workshop aims to critically rethink the concept of internment in its various forms,[2] tracing its development from colonial practices to today's 'detention archipelagos' in migration regimes.

Rationales, institutions, and techniques of both individual and collective internments were prominent features of European modernity (e.g., Foucault, 1972 and 1975), of Europe’s colonialism, and of Western colonialism more broadly. These rationales and techniques were also turned against populations within colonial cores. Indeed, some argue that colonies often served as laboratories for violence and for social and political control (e.g., Césaire, 2006; Arendt, 1951), dating back to the Renaissance and the parallel Spanish-Portuguese invasions of the Americas (Mignolo, 1995).

More recently, in the interwar period of the 20th century, Francoist Spain and Salazarist Portugal began deploying internment practices against domestic political enemies and socially ‘undesirable’ groups. These practices were also employed by early colonial Italy, which consistently resorted to the deportation and internment of opponents in penal colonies on islands in Southern Italy (Di Pasquale, 2018) and throughout Libya (Ahmida, 2021). Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany later adapted and expanded these methods, ultimately developing them into one of World War II’s most notorious features: concentration and extermination camps.

What is less well-known is that internment also featured in European policies and practices after 1945, long after the horrifying nature and consequences of earlier practices had come to light, both in colonial and internal European contexts.

In recent years, key EU member states and the EU have adopted strategies to manage asylum, refugees, and (im)migration through confinement in areas as removed as possible from European population centres, legal frameworks, and – geographically – from Europe’s mainland. This contemporary use of locations beyond Europe’s borders, evocative of the old overseas presidios (such as migrant “centres” in Libya or Tunisia), makes these practices and these people invisible to national laws and public opinion in Europe.

This is less surprising when considering a second, frequently overlooked fact: at the birth of what later became the European Union (ECSC, 1951; EEC & EURATOM, 1957), most member states were still colonial empires – Italy (until 1960), Belgium (1962), France (until 1962, with current ‘overseas territories’), the Netherlands (until 1975, with ‘overseas territories’) (Hansen & Jonson, 2022). Germany had lost its colonial possessions after the World Wars, but other countries that later joined the EU – Portugal, Spain, Denmark – retained overseas territories. The EU itself currently lists several.

This workshop explores the intersection of Europe’s colonial history – from epistemic hierarchies and marginalisation in the internment of ‘undesirables’ during the Renaissance or earlier, to the colonial world of the 19th and 20th centuries – with internment practices before and after the Second World War. The aim is twofold: first, to highlight colonial internment practices from the beginnings of European expansion, drawing on the concept of coloniality (Quijano, 2000); and second, to explore how colonial legacies have shaped the configurations of so-called “dangerous classes” over the centuries – from “undesirable” women confined in the Château de Loches (Loire Valley) in the 16th and 17th centuries, to early capitalist representations of the urban proletariat and their troubling echoes in the contemporary world. In sum, to apply the theoretical lens of coloniality to analyse modern and contemporary European practices of constructing certain populations as dangerous.

Contributions are invited on the rationales, places, and practices of internment, including but not limited to the following themes:

Archipelagos of Internment

  • Mapping the morphologies of internment systems: single-case and comparative studies of political prisons, penal colonies, forced labour camps, refugee camps in the modern and contemporary era.
  • Case studies or comparative analyses of practices targeting populations/groups as such, whether in colonial or domestic contexts.
  • What has been the (long-term) social, cultural, and environmental impact of civilian concentration on territories and their populations?

Genealogies

  • How are different forms of internment connected to the present? How have successive knowledge and/or practices borrowed from or innovated upon previous rationales, institutions, and methods? How is such knowledge transmitted?
  • What are the genealogies of contemporary migrant detention practices from the 15th to the 21st century?
  • What is the role of non-state actors – such as international or intergovernmental agencies (e.g., EU-LISA, Frontex, European Union Agency for Asylum) – in the genealogy of detection, surveillance, and internment practices?
  • Material genealogies: what can the (re)use of sites such as castles or fortresses, their reconversion, or the reallocation of camps over time or during political transitions tell us? (e.g., the Château d’Amboise—a medieval fortress, royal site and residence, prison in the 17th century and during the French Revolution, historical monument since 1840, later used as a detention site for Algerian Emir ‘Abd el-Kader and his entourage (1848–1852), a hospice, a refugee shelter during WWII, a military warehouse, and finally a heritage site). Special attention will be given to the (im)material infrastructures that enabled internment and their repurposing for migrant and refugee management, both within European states and in the context of “externalised” governance.
  • (Dis)continuities in places and techniques: how have internment practices evolved over time and across space?

Ontologies

  • Ontologies and taxonomies of groups targeted by internment strategies (rebels, ‘deviants’, prostitutes, migrants, terrorists, etc.); the evolution of those taxonomies and their transposition to other groups.
  • Racialised and gendered spaces and the definition of difference, risk, deviance, danger, and the forms of segregation employed.

Gender and internment

  • Are there gender-based internment policies targeting women and the LGBTQIA+ community, both historically and in the present day? How were gender roles and sexuality redefined during the Renaissance and under colonial regimes in Europe, Africa, and the Americas?
  • How have migratory necropolitics (Mbembe, 2020b) created new 'informal' spaces of confinement that exacerbate the physical vulnerabilities of migrants and workers?  Are there different internment strategies for different genders?
  • How do the racialisation of individuals and their gender intersect? Can internment/confinement be applied to colonial brothels and areas 'reserved' for prostitutes today?

Experiences of Internment

  • How does the diversity of internment forms, practices, and rationales across time and space shape the experiences and representations of those subjected to it? What do we know about the emotions, perceptions, subjectivities, and reflexive processes developed through these experiences?
  • What are the forms of expression, resistance, storytelling, and vulnerability that emerge from internment? How do this affect or transform the experience?

Epistemologies 

  • What ways of thinking (philosophies, discourses, epistemes) make internments possible, rational, normal, or even desirable?
  • How are internment conditions constructed as unsustainable, particularly in Southern European states or in colonial contexts?
  • Legal codification and the informal deployment of law in internment practices.

Heritage, Memory and Public Debates 

  • National heritage sites and museums are sometimes located on former sites of internment. This aspect is often ignored in national histories – as is the case with castles in the Loire Valley (e.g., Loches, Amboise, Valençay). What counter-memory exists about these sites? Is it possible to rewrite history, deconstructing dominant narratives about these prisons, camps, or containment sites from the perspective of the interned? 
  • Is there a “dark side” to the transformation of such sites into national heritage?
  • In recent cases, confinement sites have been transformed into centres of memory (e.g., Barcelona’s former Modelo prison). What are the effects of heritage-making on victims and perpetrators?
  • What links exist between heritage conversion and reparative justice? Are colonial legacies acknowledged in these processes?
  • Former colonial powers have often concealed internment histories. The gaps in official records, omissions in school curricula, and absence from lieux de mémoire (Nora, 1997) are tied to the reproduction of logics of internment, particularly in migration policy. How are these policies implemented today? How were internment sites dealt with by states emerging from decolonisation? What elements have helped break the silence around these practices and bring them into public debate?
  • How are practices of confinement, population concentration, and internment discussed in the public sphere? Are colonial precedents visible in contemporary interpretations and justifications of internment and deportation?
  • At the same time, some recent places of confinement have become centres for the interpretation of memory, such as the former Modelo prison in Barcelona. What are the effects of this transformation of heritage on victims and perpetrators? What is the link between this conversion of heritage and the processes of reparation for the harm suffered? Is the role played by the colonial legacy considered in these processes?

The organisers welcome contributions on these and other relevant aspects not listed here that address the workshop’s overarching aims.

Submission Guidelines and Deadlin

Proposals may be submitted in French, English, or Spanish (max. 2,000 words), and should be accompanied by a short CV and list of publications (max. two pages). Submissions should be sent to: francesco.correale@cnrs.fr  helene.bertheleu@univ-tours.fr  gteti@unisa.it 

Deadline: 7 September 2025

A limited number of full or partial travel grants may be awarded, particularly to earlycareer or unaffiliated researchers whose papers are selected. Further details will be provided from September onwards.

Scientific Committee

  • José-Luis Anta Félez, Un. Jaén
  • Estella Carpi, Un. College London
  • Alberto López Bargados, Un. Barcelona
  • Chiara Loschi, Un. Bologna
  • Bénédicte Michalon, CNRS - UMR 5319 Passages, Bordeaux
  • Maâti Monjib, Un. Mohammed V, Rabat
  • Antonio Morone, Un. Pavia
  • Chiara Pagano, Un. Graz
  • Fabien Sacriste, Un. Poitiers - UMR 7301 Migrinter
  • Andreas Stucki, chercheur indépendant/independent researcher/investigador independiente, Berne.
  • Sylvie Thénault, CNRS - UMR 8058 CHS, Paris.

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Note

[1] By the term “internment” - therefore declined in the plural - we mean all forms of imprisonment, forced segregation such as confinement, containment, encampment, concentration, etc. that aim to remove/enclose individuals or entire populations in prisons, camps, places otherwise adapted for this purpose.

Event attendance modalities

Hybrid event (on site and online)


Date(s)

  • Sunday, September 07, 2025

Keywords

  • internement, pratique coloniale, colonialité, mémoire, patrimoine, débat public, genre, migration, centre de detention des migrants, camps de concentration, indésirable, catégorie socio-politique, répression

Contact(s)

  • Francesco Correale
    courriel : francesco [dot] correale [at] univ-tours [dot] fr
  • Hélène Bertheleu
    courriel : bertheleu [at] univ-tours [dot] fr
  • Andrea Teti
    courriel : andrea [dot] teti [at] hotmail [dot] com

Reference Urls

Information source

  • Francesco Correale
    courriel : francesco [dot] correale [at] univ-tours [dot] fr

License

CC-BY-4.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .

To cite this announcement

Francesco Correale, Hélène Bertheleu, Andrea Teti, « Internment Europe: From Colonial Practices to Contemporary Control », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/1476o

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