We 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.
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Publications 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.
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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).
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 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 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.
Read MoreThe Refugee Law Initiative have issued a series of blog posts that respond to the UK Home Office’s New Plan for Immigration. The latest blog by Cathryn Costello and Emilie McDonnell questions the New Plan for Immigration's compatibility with the UK’s obligation not to penalise refugees for unlawful entry or stay under Article 31 of the Refugee Convention.
Read the blog The “New Plan for Immigration” and the UK’s Breach of its Legal Duty of Non-Penalisation
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‘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 .
Read MoreThe European University Institute’s The State of the Union 10th anniversary conference was held on 6 May 2021. Cathryn Costello, Francisco André, Abdelhak Bassou, Kemal Kirişci and moderator Martin Ruhs panel ‘Equal and effective partners? The future of EU-Africa and EU-Turkey cooperationon migration and refugee protection’ is available to watch.
Read MoreListen to Cathryn Costello in conversation with Bridget Anderson - in the latest Migration Mobilities Bristol Insights and Sounds - as they reflect on how the global refugee regime works in practice and what the differences are around the world?
Watch Does where you claim refugee status matter?
Read MoreEurope’s externalisation practices and their impact on refugee protection were the subject of an online discussion, part of a series of events launching The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law (OUP 2021).
Prof. Cathryn Costello (Hertie School of Governance & Oxford University), a co-editor of the Handbook, moderated the discussion, which opened with two contributors, Dr. Lilian Tsourdi (Maastricht University & Dutch Research Council) and Prof. Luisa Feline Freier (Universidad del Pacífico), discussing externalisation of protection obligations.
Responses by three leading early-career scholars, Dr. Meltem Ineli-Ciger (Suleyman Demirel University), Adel-Naim Reyhani (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, Austria) and Nasrat Sayed (Maastricht University), and half an hour for Q&A followed
The Maastricht Centre for European Law, the European Society of International Law, and Oxford University Press hosted this discussion, based on The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law edited by Profs. Cathryn Costello, Michelle Foster and Jane McAdam.
The online event was held on 17 June 2021.
Read MoreRefugees understanding of formal refugee status determination processes, and subsequently their actions, are also shaped by informal networks. On 18th June 2021, Derya Ozkul will discuss her paper, “How Do Refugees Navigate the UNHCR’s Bureaucracy? The Role of Rumours in Accessing Humanitarian Aid and Resettlement” as part of Oxford Brookes’ Migration & Refugees Network seminars.
Day and time: 18 June, 11 am BST
Platform: Zoom https://brookes.zoom.us/j/5589309523
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