Workshop: Revising the Model International Mobility Convention
The ‘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).
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Cathryn Costello contributes to the immigration detention provision of the Global Compact for Migration
Cathryn 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.
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Call for papers: Decolonising global migration law
The 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.
Download the call for papers.
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
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Natalie Welfens will present her article at the CEPS-ASILE webinar on 23rd November
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)
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Transnational workshop for Czech and Irish Judges Procedural guarantees for migrants and asylum seekers
Procedural 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.
Workshop agenda
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Interdisciplinary Research on Asylum Law and Courts
Cathryn 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.
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PROTECT Expert Forum 2021 - Keynote 10 September 2021
‘Mobility and Migration for Protection? - The impact of the Global Compact for Migration on the international protection regime’ keynote address by Cathryn Costello at the EU H2020 PROTECT project Expert Forum on 10th September, 2021 .
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Book Launch - The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law
This book launch event was hosted by the Refugee Studies Centre, Hertie School for Fundamental Rights, Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness and the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, on Tuesday 25 May 2021
The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law is a groundbreaking new book which critiques the status quo in international refugee law and sets the agenda for future research. Professor Hilary Charlesworth launched this state-of-the-art work and engaged in a lively discussion with the three editors, Professors Cathryn Costello, Michelle Foster and Jane McAdam. The event was chaired by refugee advocate and lawyer Nyadol Nyuon.
Attendees joined to find out what the Handbook tells us about the situation for refugees today, and how international protection is – or isn’t – working at a time when mobility is curtailed for so many. A 65-chapter reference work involving 78 authors, including 48 women, the Handbook is global in scope, with 10 chapters focusing in detail on specific regions, including Africa, Latin America, Asia, Oceania and the Middle East.
The Handbook contains two RefMig related chapters, coauthored by Cathryn Costello - ‘Non Penalization’ co-authored with Yulia Ioffe and ‘The Right to Work’ with Colm O’Cinnéide.
Watch now or Listen to the podcast.
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RefMig Meets the Author...Dr Lamis Abdelaaty
In this video, Professor Cathryn Costello, PI of the RefMig project, and Dr Derya Ozkul, RefMig postdoctoral researcher interview Professor Lamis Abdelaaty, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University about her new book Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (OUP, 2021). Based on her APSA award-winning doctoral research, the book makes a ground-breaking contribution to our understanding of the global refugee regime, aiming to explain why states respond differently to different groups of refugees, and in particular why they choose to delegate aspects of their response (including the function of deciding who is a refugee) to UNHCR. The work is global in scope, with particular case studies of Egypt and Turkey, and an in-depth analysis of political debates in Kenya. They discuss her research questions and hypotheses, her research methods and case selection, and the broader implications of her book.
Watch now
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Human Rights at the EU’s External Border
RefMig director, Professor Cathryn Costello, delivered the keynote speech at the 14th Conference of the Network Migration Law in November 2020. In her talk titled 'Human Rights at the EU’s External Border' Costello reflected on the topic of law at borders questioning whether those are also the borders of law. Her talk considered the multisited nature of the border -including not only extraterritorial border control but also within states and communities, and on the different ways that law works at these borders. She concluded her talk by reflecting on the rule of law in migration control - not only in terms of accountability but also about its conduct guiding function.
Watch the lecture
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Human Rights of Migrants, COVID 19 and the ECHR
Governments all around the world have imposed immobility and social distancing measures as a way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, yet responses in migration control have been highly varied. While some borders and ports are closed, and some states have halted deportations and detention, others continue to deport unwanted migrants while they import seasonal workers. What implications do the pandemic and the responses there to have for the human rights of migrants and refugees within and outside the borders of Europe? Does the European Court of Human Rights establish adequate standards to protect the human rights of migrants and refugees in the context of COVID-19? Is the CJEU affording better protection, while the ECtHR indulges states' migration control prerogatives? Watch the webinar held on 2nd June 2020 which brought together legal experts, including Cathryn Costello, to discuss the recent case law.
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