Migration law, migrants’ rights and legal Identity

Description: This PhD project focusses on the access to education, employment and housing for beneficiaries of temporary and international protection in Belgium. It thereby aims to identify the obstacles (both in policy and in practice) that these families encounter when trying to gain access to education, employment and/or housing as well as the extent to which these obstacles are a result of the respective protection scheme that the family falls under. Following the identification of obstacles, any differences in treatment will be assessed from a non-discrimination perspective. This research is part of the REFUFAM project “From policy gaps to policy innovations. Strengthening the well-being and integration pathways of refugee families”, a BRAIN-be 2.0 project funded by Belspo and carried out by a consortium of research partners. This interdisciplinary research project places families with an (international) protection status in Belgium at the centre of its analysis.
Promoter(s): Ellen Desmet , Robin Vandevoordt , Milena Belloni
Researcher(s): Roos-Marie van den Bogaard
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2021 - 2025

Description: Many migrants get stuck in so-called 'transit zones' in Europe. Governments try to deter migrants from dwelling in these zones, by means of repressive measures. This doesn't shy away migrants but pushes them in ever more destitute living conditions. In response NGOs and grassroots initiatives have tried to push for improved living conditions and to change the policies that cause these humanitarian crises. This project inquires into the advocacy work of grassroots collectives in Brussels and Calais as well as pan-European initiatives. What strategies have been developed since 2015 and to what effect? The project will contribute to debates on the possiblities (and limitations) of grassroots collectives to bring about political change in the contemporary management of migration.
Promoter(s): Robin Vandevoordt , Ellen Desmet
Researcher(s): Marlies Casier , Robin Vandevoordt
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences , Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2023 - 2026

Description: This research project focuses on how lawyers bring (cell phone) evidence about push-backs at Europe’s borders to the European Court of Human Right and the Human Rights Committee. It is part of the Dissect project. By focusing on the transformation of knowledge into evidence, the project contributes to the dissecting of evidence regimes from the perspective of lawyers and human right defenders. What is known can vary enormously between adjudicators, states, IHR lawyers, IHR defenders and victims. Nonetheless, there has been little critical reflection so far of the epistemological basis on which justice is supposed to be exercised. Why do adjudicators know what they know? How is the scope of what they claim to know shaped by the work of brokers all the way from the occurrence of an IHR violation, to the constitution of evidence, admission and finally its assessment? How do these brokers of evidence deal with subjectivity, uncertainty and assumptions about truth regimes of adjudicators?
Website research project: https://hrc.ugent.be/research/lawyers-as-brokers-of-evidence/
Promoter(s): Jill Alpes
Researcher(s): Jll Alpes
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2021 - 2024

Description: This project takes an interdisciplinary, contextualised and multi-actor approach to analyse how key stakeholders involved in the adjudication of Belgian asylum cases in appeal perceive, mobilise and practice children’s rights. Research methods from law (case law analysis) and anthropology (ethnography) will be combined to study the role and perspective of children and young people, their parents or guardians, lawyers, and judges from the Council for Alien Law Litigation (CALL). Research questions: (1) how do individuals experience and understand children’s rights (perceive); (2) to what extent do they define relevant problems in terms of children’s rights (mobilise); and (3) which norms and practices shape the internal legal culture by which the CALL operates (practice)? The project contributes to the field of ‘critical children’s rights studies’.
Website research project: https://hrc.ugent.be/research/childrens-rights-in-asylum-proceedings/
Promoter(s): Ellen Desmet
Researcher(s): Sara Lembrechts
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2020 - 2024

Description: This project investigates how children's rights are perceived, mobilised and practiced by the actors involved in the Belgian asylum procedure on appeal. We combine research methods from law (case law analysis) and anthropology (ethnography) to study the role of children's rights in these procedures from the point of view of children and young people, their parents or guardians, lawyers, first instance representatives and judges of the Council for Alien Law Litigation (CALL). We answer three questions: how do individuals experience and understand children’s rights; to what extent do they define their situation in terms of children's rights; and what standards and practices shape the internal legal culture in which the Council operates? The project contributes to the field of 'critical children's rights studies', paying particular attention to how children's rights are shaped by children themselves and by children's interaction with other groups.
Promoter(s): Ellen Desmet
Researcher(s): Sara Lembrechts
Faculty: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2020 - 2024

Description: This research focuses on the perceptions and experiences of Turkish migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands in relation to family reunification. From a sociolegal perspective it examines how they experienced this process and what their perceptions are regarding family reunification. Through in-depth interviews the researcher wants to gain deeper understanding in how perceptions of these people interrelate with policy changes over the years. This research aims to answer the central question how legal consciousness interrelate with evolved laws and policies.
Promoter(s): Ellen Desmet
Researcher(s): Ayse Güdük
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2018 - 2023

Description: FAMIMOVE is an international project co-funded by the European Commission under the JUST-2022-JCOO program. The project aims to improve the protection of migrant children and families by bringing actual practice more in line with EU goals and values, such as the protection of fundamental rights and best interests of the child. It also seeks to provide more effectiveness to EU objectives through a better coordination of instruments in overlapping fields, such as Regulations in private international law in family matters and migration law rules. The Consortium is coordinated by Prof. Marta Pertegas Sander (University of Maastricht) and is made of the following: Prof. Bettina Heiderhoff (University of Münster), Prof. Costanza Honorati (University of Milano-Bicocca); Prof. Fabienne Jault (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), Prof. Ulf Maunsbach (Lund University), Prof. Orsola Szeibert (Eötvös Loránd University) and Prof. Jinske Verhellen (Ghent University).
Promoter(s): Jinske Verhellen
Researcher(s): Leontine Bruijnen
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2023 - 2024

Description: Lore’s doctoral research echoes the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR, 2013) concern that asylum authorities might base credibility assessments on stereotypical and erroneous perceptions of gender. Her research aims to analyse the gender-(in)sensitivities in credibility assessments of asylum applications based on sexual or gender-based violence (SGBV) in the European asylum procedure (going beyond only ‘rape’ as a type of SGBV). Her research will collect data from 3 complementary resources: existing literature, asylum authorities (through case law analysis and KAP (Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices) surveys) and asylum seekers themselves (through qualitative interviews). This triangulation of input will expand the understanding of the asylum procedure and its gendered legal challenges and will contribute to the further theorization of asylum-specific gender studies.
Promoter(s): Ellen Desmet , Ines Keygnaert
Researcher(s): Lore Roels
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology , Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
Period of time: 2021 - 2025

Description: This study aims to investigate how the refugee identity is discursively co-constructed at the intersection of counselling and adjudication in the Belgian asylum procedure. Given the crucial, yet understudied position of lawyers throughout the procedure, the study departs from their perspective to analyse the circulation of discourse across frontstage and backstage asylum encounters. Adopting a sociolinguistic- ethnographic approach, it will examine a) the position of the lawyer on the crossroads between structure (the legal framework) and agency (opportunities to advocate), b) the interactional management of linguistic diversity and c) the impact of meta-communicative work in relation to the frame conditions of front- and backstage interaction. In addition to advancing our insights into the (meta)discursive positioning of the lawyer, the study aims to reduce stakeholders’ linguistic vulnerabilities across the procedure.
Promoter(s): Katrijn Maryns
Researcher(s): Marie Jacobs
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2022 - 2025

Description: In their attempts to regulate migration, Western states have produced and enforced various forms of il/legal status upon migrants. This research project provides a case study of how migrant il/legality is produced in the particular context of North-European transit zones. On the one hand, it examines how migrants are illegalized by a wide range of actors, practices and discourses. On the other hand, the research looks into the socio-legal support migrants are offered in these zones of transit (either by state actors, civic actors, or among migrants themselves) as these forms of support potentially constitute strategies to legalize migrants’ presence instead.
Promoter(s): Robin Vandevoordt , Ellen Desmet
Researcher(s): Maud Martens
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences , Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2022 - 2026

Description: Under the supervision of Christophe Verbruggen and Margo De Koster, this project researches how Belgian police forces, in collaboration with the French police and Russian secret services, tracked, monitored and possibly caught and deported fugitive Eastern European migrants, 1880-1914. At the same time, this study also considers and examines the strategies used by the migrants themselves to escape the police surveillance and possible persecution. Thus, this research explores how in a constant legislative context the practice of surveillance, expulsion and cooperation between foreign police bodies evolved through its interaction with the strategies used by the monitored and prosecuted Russian migrants to avoid detection and punishment.
Promoter(s): Christophe Verbruggen , Margo De Koster
Researcher(s): Maïté Van Vyve
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2018 - 2025

Description: The structural exclusion of illegalised migrants from Belgian society, their limited rights and restricted access to social services render it difficult for social workers and volunteers to provide more than just material support, situated in the present. This research project aims to gain a deeper understanding of structural social support practices and specific approaches to socio-legal and psycho-social support through ethnographic research methods. Therefore, the project focuses on local and municipal initiatives that link conditional welfare services, namely shelter, to intensive social counselling towards certain future perspectives for illegalised migrants. At the same time, the research endeavours to encompass how social workers, volunteers and illegalised migrants themselves construct informal forms of social support.
Promoter(s): Robin Vandevoordt , Ine Lietaert , Ellen Desmet
Researcher(s): Soline Ballet
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences , Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2021 - 2025

Description: Picture: a Somalian boy cannot prove his minority in order to be entitled to a guardian because he has no birth certificate. Or: an Afghan couple, claiming for asylum, whose Iranian marriage certificate proves a religious marriage that was concluded in Iran when the girl was 16.These cases share a complex legal dimension related to the cross-border recognition of personal status. Not only do refugees have to submit authentic documents, the content of the documents must also be recognized. Both issues are important hurdles in a refugee context. This research first aims at mapping the legal problems related to refugees: personal status. In a second phase, it will investigate whether and how the mapping and the awareness of these interactions can lead to a better coordination of these two legal frameworks with the aim of enhancing the protection of refugees.
Promoter(s): Jinske Verhellen
Researcher(s): Geertrui Daem
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2021 - 2025

Description: People are forced to flee their country for numerous reasons, one of them could be the persecution they fear on the ground of their sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). My research listens to the experiences of SOGI applicants for international protection in Belgium: in the reception centres, with LGBTIQ+ organisations and during their asylum interview. Their experiences, narratives and self-identification are all shaped by the people and systems they encounter, and those they eventually need to convince of the credibility of their SOGI - which might be different from what fits within the dominant Western LGBTIQ+ discourse of the listener-assessor.
Promoter(s): Ellen Desmet , Marlies Casier
Researcher(s): Liselot Casteleyn
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Law and Criminology
Period of time: 2020 - 2024