Event: EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: Conversation with European Commission Vice President Schinas

On April 22, 2021, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law will host online "EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: Conversation with European Commission Vice President Schinas." This event is co-sponsored by the War Crimes Research Group in the Department of War Studies and the Society, Culture and Law Research Theme in the School of Security Studies, King's College London. Detaisl and registration are here.

Çalı, Bianku, & Motoc: Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights

Başak Çalı (Hertie School), Ledi Bianku (Univ. of Strasbourg - Law), & Iulia Motoc (Judge, European Court of Human Rights) have published Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights (Oxford Univ. Press 2021). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

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This edited collection investigates where the European Convention on Human Rights as a living instrument stands on migration and the rights of migrants.

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This book offers a comprehensive analysis of cases brought by migrants in different stages of migration, covering the right to flee, who is entitled to enter and remain in Europe, and what treatment is owed to them when they come within the jurisdiction of a Council of Europe member state. As such, the book evaluates the case law of the European Convention on Human Rights concerning different categories of migrants including asylum seekers, irregular migrants, those who have migrated through domestic lawful routes, and those who are currently second or third generation migrants in Europe.

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The broad perspective adopted by the book allows for a systematic analysis of how and to what extent the Convention protects non-refoulement, migrant children, family rights of migrants, status rights of migrants, economic and social rights of migrants, as well as cultural and religious rights of migrants.

Appel à contributions: Demi-journées des jeunes chercheurs : «Le trafic de migrants en droit international» et «Exilés de guerre et droit international»

Dans le cadre du colloque annuel de la SFDI 2021, organisé en partenariat avec le Projet RefWar qui aura pour thème « Migrations et droit international » (4-5 novembre 2021, UVSQ / Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris), le Réseau des jeunes chercheurs de la SFDI organise cette année deux demi-journées ouvertes aux jeunes chercheurs pour venir échanger et débattre sous la présidence d’un professeur de droit international sur des thèmes en lien avec le colloque annuel. La première de ces demi-journées sera organisée en ligne le 3 juin 2021 après-midi et sera présidée par la professeure Bérangère Taxil. Elle aura pour thème : « Le trafic de migrants en droit international ». La seconde de ces demi-journées se déroulera également en ligne le 10 juin 2021 et sera présidée par le professeur Julian Fernandez. Elle aura pour thème : « Exilés de guerre et droit international ». Appel à contributions Demi-journées du Réseau des Jeunes Chercheurs SFDI 2021.

AJIL Unbound Symposium: COVID-19, Global Mobility and International Law

AJIL Unbound has posted a symposium on "COVID-19, Global Mobility and International Law." The symposium includes an introduction by E. Tendayi Achiume, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, and Thomas Spijkerboer and contributions by Guofu Liu, Frédéric Mégret, Florian F. Hoffmann and Isadora d'Avila Lima Nery Gonçalves, Tesseltje de Lange, Sandra Mantu, and Paul Minderhoud, Abdoulaye Hamadou, John Reynolds, and Ian M. Kysel and Chantal Thomas.

Adeola: The Internally Displaced Person in International Law

Romola Adeola (School of Advanced Study, Univ. of London - Refugee Law Initiative) has published The Internally Displaced Person in International Law (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020). Here's the abstract:

While the plight of persons displaced within the borders of states has emerged as a global concern, not much attention has been given to this specific category of persons in international legal scholarship. Unlike refugees, internally displaced persons remain within the states in which they are displaced. Current statistics indicate that there are more people displaced within state borders than persons displaced outside states. Romola Adeola examines the protection of the internally displaced person under international law, considering existing legal regimes at various levels of governance and institutional mechanisms for internally displaced persons.

Siegelberg: Statelessness: A Modern History

Mira L. Siegelberg (Univ. of Cambridge - History) has published Statelessness: A Modern History (Harvard Univ. Press 2020). Here's the abstract:

Two world wars left millions stranded in Europe. The collapse of empires and the rise of independent states in the twentieth century produced an unprecedented number of people without national belonging and with nowhere to go. Mira Siegelberg’s innovative history weaves together ideas about law and politics, rights and citizenship, with the intimate plight of stateless persons, to explore how and why the problem of statelessness compelled a new understanding of the international order in the twentieth century and beyond.

In the years following the First World War, the legal category of statelessness generated novel visions of cosmopolitan political and legal organization and challenged efforts to limit the boundaries of national membership and international authority. Yet, as Siegelberg shows, the emergence of mass statelessness ultimately gave rise to the rights regime created after World War II, which empowered the territorial state as the fundamental source of protection and rights, against alternative political configurations.

Today we live with the results: more than twelve million people are stateless and millions more belong to categories of recent invention, including refugees and asylum seekers. By uncovering the ideological origins of the international agreements that define categories of citizenship and non-citizenship, Statelessness better equips us to confront current dilemmas of political organization and authority at the global level.

Call for Submissions: Migration and Culture: Implementation of Cultural Rights of Migrants

A call for submissions has been issued for a volume on "Migration and Culture: Implementation of Cultural Rights of Migrants," to be edited by Giovanni Carlo Bruno (National Research Council of Italy), Fulvio Maria Palombino (Univ. of Naples “Federico II”), Adriana Di Stefano (Univ. of Catania), and Gianpaolo Maria Ruotolo (Univ. of Foggia). The call is here.

Ippolito, Borzoni, & Casolari: Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean: Prospects for Migration Issues

Francesca Ippolito (Univ. of Cagliari - Law), Gianluca Borzoni (Univ. of Cagliari - History), & Federico Casolari (Univ. of Bologna - Law) have published Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean: Prospects for Migration Issues (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

This timely book assesses national and supranational bilateral approaches to dealing with the rising tide of migration into the European Union via the Mediterranean Sea. International law and EU migration law specialists critically assess the legal tools adopted to engage with the ‘refugee crisis’. While the EU works to develop a unified approach to Mediterranean transit and origin countries, the authors argue that a crucial role should be accorded to individual states in finding a solution to this complex and sensitive situation.

Historical and political factors playing into migration strategies are discussed, and the legal framework underpinning the bilateral and regional schemes on which the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean seek to cooperate on migration is also examined. Migration-related issues, such as search and rescue at sea, human rights and policing are explored throughout the book. Comparing the bilateral arrangements Southern EU Member States have made with the Mediterranean countries of origin and the regional bilateralism conducted by the EU, expert authors assess how best to achieve a coherent model.

Call for Contributions: Labour Migration in the time of COVID-19: Inequalities and Perspectives for Change

A call for contributions has been issued for a volume on "Labour Migration in the time of COVID-19: Inequalities and Perspectives for Change," to be edited by Giulia Ciliberto (Univ. of Naples Federico II) and Fulvia Staiano (Giustino Fortunato Univ. and National Research Council of Italy). The call is here.

Special Issue: Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violation

The current issue of the German Law Journal (Vol. 21, Special Issue No. 3, April 2020) focuses on "Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violation." Contents include:

• Special Issue: Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violation
• Cathryn Costello & Itamar Mann, Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violations
• Nikolas Feith Tan & Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, A Topographical Approach to Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Migration Control
• Başak Çalı, Cathryn Costello, & Stewart Cunningham, Hard Protection through Soft Courts? Non-Refoulement before the United Nations Treaty Bodies
• Violeta Moreno-Lax, The Architecture of Functional Jurisdiction: Unpacking Contactless Control—On Public Powers, S.S. and Others v. Italy, and the “Operational Model”
• Efthymios Papastavridis, The European Convention of Human Rights and Migration at Sea: Reading the “Jurisdictional Threshold” of the Convention Under the Law of the Sea Paradigm
• Vladislava Stoyanova, The Right to Life Under the EU Charter and Cooperation with Third States to Combat Human Smuggling
• Carla Ferstman, Human Rights Due Diligence Policies Applied to Extraterritorial Cooperation to Prevent “Irregular” Migration: European Union and United Kingdom Support to Libya
• Daria Davitti, Beyond the Governance Gap: Accountability in Privatized Migration Control
• Evangelia (Lilian) Tsourdi, Holding the European Asylum Support Office Accountable for its role in Asylum Decision-Making: Mission Impossible?
• Melanie Fink, The Action for Damages as a Fundamental Rights Remedy: Holding Frontex Liable
• Gabrielle Holly, Challenges to Australia's Offshore Detention Regime and the Limits of Strategic Tort Litigation
• Ioannis Kalpouzos, International Criminal Law and the Violence against Migrants
• Itamar Mann, The Right to Perform Rescue at Sea: Jurisprudence and Drowning

Bruno, Palombino, & Di Stefano: Migration Issues before International Courts and Tribunals

Giovanni Carlo Bruno (Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development, National Research Council of Italy), Fulvio Maria Palombino (Federico II Univ.), & Adriana Di Stefano (Univ. of Catania) have published Migration Issues before International Courts and Tribunals (CNR edizioni 2019). The e-book is available for free download here. Here's the abstract:

The volume collects 16 contributions on the role of international Courts and Tribunals in the development and/or application of migration law, fostering a dialogical approach among scholars, experts and policy makers in addressing relevant issues of judicial practice in the field. Special attention is paid throughout the volume to issues of human rights, given their centrality in international adjudication on migration and refugee law in times of crisis (suffice it to mention massive movements of people at sea, as well as de facto or de iure emergency situations in Europe and beyond).

Call for Papers: Child in Migration: Status and Identity

A call for papers has been issued for a conference on “Child in Migration: Status and Identity,” to be held May 28-30, 2020, in Zielona Góra, Poland. According to the organizers, the conference "is devoted to the legal status of migrant children. The conference will provide a forum to address and discuss a number of challenging questions related to this issue, from the perspective of both public and private international law. We are especially interested in the legal obligations arising from the irregular situation of children lacking proper documentation, citizenship and registration." For more information, consult the conference website.

Thomas: Disorderly Borders: How International Law Shapes Irregular Migration

Chantal Thomas (Cornell Univ. - Law) has published Disorderly Borders: How International Law Shapes Irregular Migration (Oxford Univ. Press 2019). Here's the abstract:

Immigration crises faced by the United States today show the interplay between areas of global law and policy that might at first glance seem quite disparate—economic law, human rights and refugee law, and criminal law relating to the trafficking and smuggling of migrants. This book is largely dedicated to unpacking those dynamics and ultimately argues that reform efforts must be expanded.

Using as a central case study how international law relates to the irregular labor migration of undocumented migrant farm workers in upstate New York, this book examines the conditions for entry of these workers, for their residence and work while in the US, and finally what happens if they are apprehended and subject to expulsion. The author aims to show that the presence of these migrants can be significantly attributed to dynamics flowing from international economic law, and that the interaction of international economic law with international human rights, refugee, labor and criminal law in defining their legal rights and remedies is often incoherent. As such, this wave of irregular migration might be seen as the product of a "perfect storm" in international law: a vexed and unstable relationship between disparate regimes that propels dynamic population movements without just and orderly means of protection.19). Here's the abstract:

Achiume: Migration as Decolonization

E. Tendayi Achiume (Univ. of California, Los Angeles - Law) has published Migration as Decolonization (Stanford Law Review, Vol. 71, no. 6, p. 1509, June 2019). Here's the abstract:

International migration is a defining problem of our time, and central to this problem are the ethical intuitions that dominate thinking on migration and its governance. This Article challenges existing approaches to one particularly contentious form of international migration, as an important first step toward a novel and more ethical way of approaching problems of the movement of people across national borders.

The prevailing doctrine of state sovereignty under international law today is that it entails the right to exclude nonnationals, with only limited exceptions. Whatever the scope of these exceptions, so-called economic migrants—those whose movement is motivated primarily by a desire for a better life—are typically beyond them. Whereas international refugee law and international human rights law impose restrictions on states’ right to exclude nonnationals whose lives are endangered by the risk of certain forms of persecution in their countries of origin, no similar protections exist for economic migrants. International legal theorists have not fundamentally challenged this formulation of state sovereignty, which justifies the assertion of a largely unfettered right to exclude economic migrants.

This Article looks to the history and legacy of the European colonial project to challenge this status quo. It argues for a different theory of sovereignty that makes clear why, in fact, economic migrants of a certain kind have compelling claims to national admission and inclusion in countries that today unethically insist on a right to exclude them. European colonialism entailed the emigration of tens of millions of Europeans and the flow of natural and human resources across the globe, for the benefit of Europe and Europeans. This Article details how global interconnection and political subordination, initiated over the course of this history, generate a theory of sovereignty that obligates former colonial powers to open their borders to former colonial subjects. Insofar as certain forms of international migration today are responsive to political subordination rooted in colonial and neocolonial structures, a different conceptualization of such migration is necessary: one that treats economic migrants as political agents exercising equality rights when they engage in “decolonial” migration.

Conference: Migration/International Legal Regulation​

On June 27-29, 2019, the Slovene Branch of the International Law Association will host an ILA Regional Conference on "Migration/international Legal Regulation​," in Portorož. The program is here.

Call for Submissions: Migration Issues before International Courts and Tribunals

A call for submissions has been issued for a volume on "Migration Issues before International Courts and Tribunals," to be edited by Giovanni Carlo Bruno (National Research Council of Italy), Fulvio Maria Palombino (Univ. of Naples “Federico II”), and Adriana Di Stefano (Univ. of Catania). The call is here.

Goldenziel: Checking Rights at the Border: Detention of Migrants in International and Comparative Law

Jill I. Goldenziel (Marine Corps Univ. - Command and Staff College) has posted Checking Rights at the Border: Detention of Migrants in International and Comparative Law (Virginia Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Human rights laws, both international and domestic, present a challenge to the sovereign rights of states. The right to determine who may enter a state is one of the fundamental attributes of sovereignty. Under international law, however, states cannot return a migrant with a potentially valid asylum claim to a place where his life will be in danger, and cannot return any migrant to a place where he might be tortured. States often detain migrants while processing their asylum claims, and pending deportation if those claims should fail. Yet international law, and many states’ domestic laws, prohibit prolonged detention and restrict detention conditions. As migration flows and detention rates have swelled globally, high courts have increasingly decided cases involving the rights of detained migrants. On February 27, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a critical decision on this issue in Jennings v. Rodriguez, allowing thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers to be detained indefinitely, without bail hearings, while remanding the case for consideration of their constitutional claims. This article compares court cases involving detention of migrants in the U.S., Australia, and Europe to determine how states can legally comply with human rights norms while preserving their right to protect their borders. Based on these cases, the article proposes best practices for state compliance with international law on detention. This comparison illuminates how courts strike a delicate balance between human rights and state sovereignty where national security interests are at stake.

Call for Papers: Environmentally-Induced Migration and Human Rights’ Protection: The Point of View of International and European Law

The Interest Group on the International and European Law of Migration and Asylum of the Società Italiana di Diritto internazionale e di Diritto dell’Unione europea has issued a call for papers for a conference on "Environmentally-Induced Migration and Human Rights’ Protection: The Point of View of International and European Law / Migrazioni indotte da cause ambientali e tutela dei diritti umani: la prospettiva del diritto internazionale ed europeo." The call is here.

Papanicolopulu: International Law and the Protection of People at Sea

Irini Papanicolopulu (Univ. of Milano-Bicocca - Law) has published International Law and the Protection of People at Sea (Oxford Univ. Press 2018). Here's the abstract:

Media interest in the fates of people at sea has heightened across the last decade. The attacks and the hostage taking of victims by Somali pirates, and the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in the Mediterranean, ask pressing questions, as does the sinking of the Costa Concordia off the Italian island of Giglio which, one hundred years after the Titanic capsized, reminded the world that, despite modern navigation systems and technology, shipping is still fallible. Do pirates have human rights? Can migrants at sea be turned back to the State from which they have sailed? How can the crews of vessels be protected against inhuman and degrading working and living conditions? And are States liable under international human rights treaties for arresting drug traffickers on the high seas? The first text to comprehensively compare the legal rights of different people at sea, Irini Papanicolopulu's timely text argues that there is an overarching duty of the state to protect people at sea and adopt all necessary acts with a view towards ensuring enjoyment of their rights. Rather than being in doubt, she reveals that the emerging law in this area is watertight.

AJIL Unbound Symposium: Framing Global Migration Law - Part III

AJIL Unbound has posted a symposium on "Framing Global Migration Law - Part III," the third in a three-part symposium. Parts I and II are here and here. The symposium includes an introduction by Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Peter J. Spiro and contributions by Joel Trachtman, Ralph Wilde, Audrey Macklin, Siobhán Mullally, Chantal Thomas, Iris Goldner Lang, and Moria Paz.