MOBILE – Mobility Law Open Lab with Dimitrios Tsiatsianis

Keeping the waste, discarding the people: unpacking the EU Legal Infrastructure of Waste Export Restrictions under a Postocolonial Environmental Justice perspective

Guest presenter: Dimitrios Tsiatsianis is a PhD researcher at the Law Department of the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. He is also among the coordinators of the Environmental Law and Governance Working Group at the EUI. 

Presentation: This project understands the European Union’s Circular Economy Plan as a legal infrastructure (LI) aiming to exploit waste as a supply source of critical raw materials. This LI creates an entanglement of legal regimes enabling the maintenance of waste streams within EU territorial boundaries. In this regard, waste export restrictions rules (WER) feature as a straightforward legal regime to enable the Circular Economy LI. The project examines the legal entanglements created by the LI under a Postcolonial Environmental Justice lens. Firstly, it argues that migration law and financial aid law should be among the legal regimes relevant for the Circular Economy LI, as two legal pillars that are critical for enhancing the agency of third-country waste workers to decide on their employment chances in case that waste flows are restricted. Secondly, the project examines all relevant legal regimes as an overarching legal entanglement to understand how the Circular Economy LI further constitutes environmental and labour conditions in postcolonial settings.

Time: 26 September 2024 12:00-13:15

Place: MOBILE – 6B-2-22 Southern Campus + ONLINE

Online participation

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