The research programme on migration law addresses migration and refugee law in Europe, and increasingly includes non-European as well as postcolonial approaches to the field.
It combines legal-positivist research (esp. Hemme Battjes’ work on asylum and Marcelle Reneman’s work on procedural law) with interdisciplinary work that is often based on thorough positivist analyses.
Approaches from political philosophy and empirical legal studies are prominent in particular Isabella Leroy’s research on the legal framework of refugee camps in Europe and Greta Albertari’s work on the European response to “2015”.
An innovative focus is on intimacy and emotions in Betty de Hart’s projects EUROMIX: Regulating Mixed Intimacies in Europe (ERC Consolidator Grant, 2017-2022) and Love, sex, faith. The politics of emotion in migration law (NWO Open Competition Grant, 2023-2027), which both undertake empirical analyses of legal phenomena.
Furthermore, engagement with political philosophy is prominent in Lieneke Slingenberg’s project Human Rights Law, Non-Domination and Spatial Restrictions for Refugees (NWO Veni Grant 2018-2021), Katja Swider’s work on statelessness, Martijn Stronks’ monograph Grasping Legal Time (Cambridge University Press 2022), Janna Wessels’ monograph The Concealment Controversy (Cambridge University Press 2021), and Jordan Dez’s and Thomas Spijkerboer’s project Claim Making as Rights Making: Irregular Migrants Reshaping International Human Rights Law (NWO Open Competition 2019-2024).
Non-European perspectives are central in the work of Younous Arbaoui on the Global Compact on Migration, Orçun Ulusoy’s work on Turkish migration law and in Thomas Spijkerboer’s and Orçun Ulusoy’s research as part of the ASILE project.
The continuing impact of colonial history is the subject of the interdisciplinary research project on the Dutch legal history of slavery of Guno Jones, Nawal Mustafa and Joraline van Engelen.
In Janna Wessels’ projects on state interests in the migration case law of the European Court of Human Rights (NWO Veni Grant 2022-2026 and DFG Grant 2022-2026), as well as in the work of Betty de Hart and Thomas Spijkerboer (supra) innovative methodological approaches (legal discourse analysis; law and emotion; third world approaches to international law) are being developed in the context of migration law.
Program leader: dr. Janna Wessels MSc