This site was created by me, Lisa Senecal. I received a PhD with distinction in Migrations and Anthropology from ICS-ULisboa. My research examines how the EU regime of borders structures racialized mobility, noncitizenship and differential exposure across the Mediterranean. Drawing on critical border theory, I analyzes borders not simply as territorial lines but as layered infrastructures that shape mobility, belonging and vulnerability.
Through ethnography, historical research, counter-mapping and multimodal methods, my work bridges structural analysis and lived experience to investigate how bordering practices are enacted through everyday bureaucratic encounters.
My research contributes to debates on migration, race, inequality and mobility governance in Europe.
In addition to being a researcher, I am a mother and a footballer (soccer player for my American friends or friends who get confused when I use this word, knowing I am American). When I am not reading, writing, playing, walking in the woods or watching my daughter play sports or music, you can probably find us in salt water. Floating and splashing in the waves is my favorite way to be in nature.
My dissertation, Counter-mapping Malta: A study of the regime of borders through structures & noncitizen subjectivities, disentangles constructed aspects of the regime of borders in Malta from those which are experienced by the noncitizens who engage them. Using border ethnography as a tool to define both physical and conceptual spaces of engagement, it addresses the construction and enforcement of border structures and how they are experienced and negotiated to fully understand their function, purpose, and consequences. This approach aims to illustrate how a regime of borders (re)produces hierarchies of value that have direct consequences on the trajectories and opportunities of the noncitizens who traverse borders. Through the experiences of a diverse group of noncitizens, it reveals how power works in context and how hierarchies are (re)constructed and (re)produced.
deconstructing b/orders. 