‘IOM Unbound?: Obligations and Accountability of the International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion’ by Prof Cathryn Costello (University College Dublin, formerly Hertie School), Prof Megan Bradley (McGill University) and Dr. Angela Sherwood (Queen Mary University of London) was published by Cambridge University Press in June 2023
Read MoreThe open access link for Megan Bradley, Cathryn Costello and Angela Sherwood (eds), IOM Unbound: Obligations and Accountability of the International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion (Cambridge University Press, 2023), is now live.
Link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/iom-unbound/63DD0B11FD174F2BFEB94DEC458F9E1D
Read MoreThe PROTECT project’s final conference was held on March 6-8, 2023 at the nhow Brussels Bloom Hotel in Brussels. Professor Cathryn Costello delivered a Keynote Address on the challenges of implementing international protection for refugees effectively and equally.
Read MoreWe are very disappointed to announce that the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) 40th Anniversary conference Recognising Refugees will no longer take place on March 20 and 21 as expected.
Read MorePublications from the RefMig project continue to attract attention from scholars around the world. Dr Derya Ozkul and Rita Jarrous’ article ‘How do refugees navigate the UNHCR's bureaucracy? The role of rumours in accessing humanitarian aid and resettlement’ published in the Third World Quarterly, has been viewed more than 2,500 times within a year since its publication online.
Read MoreThe ‘Revising MIMC: Finding Solutions to the Challenges of Today’s Migration’ conference was organised by the RefMig Project in association with the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) on October 13-14, 2022. Practitioners and scholars working on migration and refugee protection issues gathered at the Hertie School, Berlin to discuss emerging challenges in migration governance in the context of reform proposals to the text of the Model International Mobility Convention (MIMC).
Read MoreCathryn Costello, Professor of Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights, contributed to a major conference on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in Geneva organised by Professor Vincent Chetail (Graduate Institute). The event on 24 and 25 November brought together leading legal scholars to examine the instrument in context. Together with Dr Yulia Ioffe (UCL), Costello presented on the Compact’s provision on immigration detention (Objective 13), which commits states and the international community to ‘Use migration detention only as a measure of last resort and work towards alternatives.’
The conference contributions will be published by Oxford University Press as a legal commentary of the Global Compact in its series Oxford Commentaries on International Law.
Read MoreRefMig postdoctoral researcher, Natalie Welfens, has contributed to the policy report “Towards a Global Resettlement Alliance”, recently published by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The report includes an overview of codified rights, resettlement and safe pathways, analyses the main political claims about resettlement, and proposes a plan to revive resettlement and humanitarian admission by 2024, based on six country reports. Natalie contributed to the infographic on “Rights, Resettlement and Complementary Pathways” and the short analysis “Debating Resettlement”, which provides a guide through political claims about resettlement and complementary pathways. You can find the complete study here.
Read MoreOn February 22nd, at 4 pm (CET) RefMig postdoctoral researcher, Natalie Welfens, will give a talk entitled 'Promising Victimhood’ Paradoxical Selection Criteria in Refugee Resettlement’ at the University of Warsaw. The event will take place online on Zoom.
You can join via this link.
The talk is part of the Interdisciplinary Seminar in Empirical Social Inquiry (ISESS) series. You can find the abstract and more information on the seminar series on the ISESS website.
Read MoreThe Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School, the European University Institute and the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand invite abstract submissions on post-/decolonial critiques of global migration law.
The workshop, which will take place on 10 June 2022, is open to both established and early-career scholars and practitioners, including advanced PhD students. We welcome submissions from legal scholars and those studying law from other disciplinary vantage points, including law and development; legal history; and the sociology and politics (political philosophy, political science and IR) of global migration law. We welcome in particular papers that examine underexplored legal regimes and avoid Eurocentrism.
Interested participants should provide an abstract in Word format of no more than 500 words. Together with their abstracts, applicants should provide the following information: name, affiliation, the title of the proposed paper and an email address. To submit an abstract please write to fundamentalrights@hertie-school.org by 15 February 2022 with the heading ‘Submission Decolonising Migration Workshop’.
Organising Committee and Commentators
Prof. Tendayi Achiume, UCLA Law School and UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance
Prof. Diego Acosta, University of Bristol
Prof. Tobias Berger, Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Cathryn Costello, Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights and Oxford Refugee Studies Centre
Dr. Nadine El-Enany, Centre for Research on Race and Law, Birkbeck College University of London
Prof. Neha Jain, European University Institute
Prof. Loren Landau, Oxford University and African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand
Prof. Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Temple University
Prof. Mohammad (Shahab) Shahabuddin, University of Birmingham
Vera Wriedt, PhD researcher, Hertie School, Centre for Fundamental Rights
On 23 November, Natalie Welfens will speak at the CEPS-ASILE webinar on 'Resettlement, Complementary Pathways and the Global Compact on Refugees', which launches the Special Issue of Frontiers in Human Dynamics ‘Managing Forced Displacement: Refugee Resettlement and Complementary Pathways’. Natalie will present her article 'The Politics of Vulnerability in Refugee Admissions Under the EU-Turkey Statement', which she co-authored with Yasemin Bekyol for the special issue.
Please register here
Link to article (open access)
Read MoreThe 70th anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention is being marked by a conference organised by Der DGVN-Landesverband Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW) und die französische UN-Gesellschaft (AFNU) on 19th October 2021. Professor Cathryn Costello will reflect on ‘The EU Legal Framework and the 1951 Refugee Convention: Bolstering, Broadening and Bordering’.
See the full agenda and further details.
Read MoreProcedural guarantees in asylum procedures and in immigration detention, was considered by a group of Irish and Czech judges and other experts in an event organised by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Immigrant Council of Ireland & Forum for Human Rights on on 5/6th October 2021. The event included a lecture ‘Safe country of origin concept: criteria, consequences, case-law’ by Professor Cathryn Costello.
Read MoreThe Berlin Potsdam Research Group “The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?” is hosting a Public Event: Thomas Franck Lecture by Professor Cathryn Costello, ‘“The 1951 Refugee Convention at 70: Whither the Convention in the Global Refugee Regime?”. This is an in-person event, to be held on on Thursday, 28 October 2021, at 6.15 pm, see further details.
Read MoreOn 22 September 2021, Dr Derya Ozkul and Dr Caroline Nalule shared key findings from three RefMig Country Profiles with participants of the Refugee Studies Centre’s International Online School in Forced Migration. In their presentation titled ‘Refugee Recognition in Practice: Lessons from a Three-Country Study’, Dr Ozkul and Dr Nalule discussed the role of various institutions in Lebanon, Kenya and South Africa and the quality of recognition for asylum seekers and refugees. The presentation was followed by a Q&A with participants in the online school.
Read MoreCathryn Costello and Jessica Breaugh provided a keynote presentation at a workshop, entitled "Flucht vor Recht – Flucht ins Recht? Empirisch-interdisziplinäre Asylrechtsforschung am Schauplatz Gericht" held in hybrid form at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany on 30 September & 1 October 2021. They discussed the empirical study of refugee recognition processes generally, the particular challenges of studying UNHCR mandate R efugee Status Determination (RSD), and the turn to surveys of decision-makers and others as a data source. They discussed the role of surveys in sociolegal research, in particular the RegMig survey developed to examine he workings of UNHCR mandate RSD. It is anticipated that the manuscripts presented at the workshop will form the basis of a special issue of the German Journal of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies ( Zeitschrift für Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung – Z’Flucht).
A short summary of this workshop on methods is available.
Read MoreDerya Ozkul will give a presentation titled 'A New Era for Recognising Refugees in Turkey: Handover of RSD from UNHCR to DGMM' in a conference organised by the Global Education and Culture: Research and Application Center (KEKAM) at Yeditepe University, Istanbul. This fifth annual conference, on 11-12th October 2021, is on the theme 'International Migration in the XXIst century' and will include scholars and practitioners. Dr Ozkul's presentation will be in Turkish.
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Regional launch of The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law: The Middle East
A discussion on the commonalities and contrasts in state approaches to refugee protection in the Middle East.
Time and place: Sep. 15, 2021 3:00 PM–4:15 PM, Online event - registration required
Read MoreCaroline Nalule participated in the panel ‘The global refugee regime and international protection in Africa: Out of step and out of time?’ speaking on ‘The Refugee Recognition Regimes Of Kenya And South Africa Through The Lens Of The Global Compact On Refugees’ at the ERC PROTECT Project MidTerm Conference on 27th August 2021. Watch the panel.
Read MoreThe RefMig research project have released surveys to study UNHCR mandate RSD. We are inviting current and former UNHCR RSD officers and legal aid providers in mandate RSD processes to complete the surveys. This video gives further information on the purpose of the surveys and how to participate in this important study.
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![Book Publication: IOM Unbound: Obligations & Accountability of the International Organization for Migration in an Era of Expansion [CUP, 2023]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c58a7ee7980b36f05c944a2/1686900969276-8174TIQVXKEE7E2AJU4V/Screen+Shot+2023-06-16+at+09.13.22.png)
![[Video] Professor Cathryn Costello's Keynote Address 'Implementing International Protection' at PROTECT Final Conference](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c58a7ee7980b36f05c944a2/1597259912665-RRI3JEXEEF08M4CHZJ4B/people%2B-%2Bcathryn.jpg)
