Research
Fundamental research
Description: The European Union increasingly looks to outsource its international responsibility to protect refugees to third countries. Its policy space is limited, however, by international refugee and human rights law. This project assesses legal and actual refugee protection in Turkey and Morocco. The research focusses on refugees' 'user's perspective' on fundamental human rights, through field work, as well as a critical evaluation of national protection frameworks against international law minimum standards, including the non-refoulement principle. It will also be assessed if there exists an internationally shared responsibility to protect towards refugees, and what this could entail. Conclusions will include findings and recommendations for national asylum systems, the EU's external migration policy, and the international law framework. The project is funded by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University (2018-2021).
Researcher: Ruben Wissing
Supervisor: Prof. Ellen Desmet
The research focuses on family reunification of Turkish migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands. From a socio-legal perspective the legal consciousness and the strategies of the migrants will be examined in light of evolving laws and policies in both countries. Fieldwork is an important component of the project. The researcher will conduct in-depth semi-structured interviews with Turkish migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands and will investigate migrants' legal consciousness regarding evolving laws and policies on family reunification in both countries. On the basis of these results, the researcher will make a thorough comparative analysis of the legal consciousness and used strategies concerning family reunification of Turkish migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands. This project is funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) (2018-2021).
Researcher: Ayse Güdük
Supervisor: Prof. Ellen Desmet
Exiled and Separated: A multi-sited ethnography of refugee families attempting to reunite
Researcher: Dr. Milena Belloni
Supervisors: Prof. Gert Verschraegen and Prof. Ellen Desmet
Economic refugees: an analysis of persecution and displacement in the new global era
Researcher: Shepherd Mutsvara
Supervisors: Prof. Joanna Bar (Pedagogical University of Krakow) and Prof. Ellen Desmet
Children’s rights in appellate asylum proceedings in Belgium: a legal ethnography
This project adopts 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, representatives of the first instance asylum authority, and judges from the Council for Alien Law Litigation (CALL).
The questions guiding this research are (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’, paying attention in particular to how children’s rights are shaped by children themselves and through interaction of children with other groups. This project is funded by FWO (2020-2024).
Researcher: Sara Lembrechts
Supervision: Prof. Ellen Desmet
Challenging queer migration narratives. A case study of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights in the Belgian asylum procedure
Once arrived in Europe, in a country where SOGI rights are recognised as human rights and as such expanded the scope of refugee law, the struggles of SOGI refugees continue. To receive international protection, they have to construct a narrative which proofs the credibility of their sexual orientation and gender identity, and the well-foundedness of their fear of persecution – in the eye of the beholder. The asylum procedure leaves SOGI refugees and state actors to negotiate with(in) the legal framework to come to the same understanding of SOGI rights, despite different cultural contexts and the dominance of Western frameworks.
Building on the critical insights of queer and post-colonial scholars, the research aims to gain insight into the complexity of the asylum procedure and its intertwinement with essentialised narratives of queer(ness and) migration through a case study of SOGI applications in the Belgian asylum procedure. Interviews, participant observations and co-operations as well as a critical discourse analysis will reveal the narratives inherent in the construction of SOGI rights by SOGI refugees and in the assessment of those rights by state actors.
Researcher: Liselot Casteleyn
Supervision: Prof. Ellen Desmet en Prof. Marlies Casier
Applied research
PALIM: pilot project addressing labour shortages through innovative labour migration models (2019-2020)
PALIM (Project Addressing Labour Shortages Through Innovative Labour Migration Models) is a pilot project carried out by the Belgian development agency, Enabel, with support of the European Union and the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMDP). The project aims to test a new labour migration model, by linking the development of the ICT sector in Morocco with the labour shortage gaps of well-trained ICT-staff in Flanders. Morocco is confronted with an excess of higher educated persons, who remain unemployed on the Moroccan labour market due to a lack of jobs. PALIM will train about 120 persons in Morocco as ICT workers. Ninety of them will then be coached to find a job in Morocco, about thirty persons will be accompanied in seeking employment in Belgium.
The research at Ghent University focuses, first, on the integration services offered by companies and private operators to third country nationals upon arrival in Flanders and Brussels. Second, a mapping and analysis will be made of the actors in Flanders and Brussels, responsible for the integration of migrant workers on a professional, social and personal level. Finally, the study will focus on the visa application procedure for third country nationals when applying for a single permit. The overall PALIM project is carried out by Enabel in co-operation with VDAB and ANAPEC (the Flemish and Moroccan employment counsellors), as well as the Flemish employers' organisations VOKA and Agoria, and their Moroccan counterparts, CGEM and APEBI. Fedasil and the Flemish Agency for Civic Integration take up a supporting role in this process.
Researchers: Geertrui Daem and Evelyne Van der Elst
This research provides an insight into the administrative procedures regarding the implementation of the Directive 2014/54/EU into Belgian law, a European directive that intends to better facilitate the right to free movement of workers. The research contains a critical analysis and description of the municipal practices in the three regions of Belgium, focussing on the registration and residence formalities for EU citizens who exercise their right to free movement. The research also includes an exploratory analysis of residence formalities in the following countries: Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy. Lastly, the research will give possible recommendations regarding the law and implementation thereof as well as suggestions for more efficient and uniform municipal practices. The research is carried out in collaboration with the EU Rights Clinic of the University of Kent and Fragomen; it is funded by Myria – the Federal Migration Centre.
Researchers: Roos-Marie van den Bogaard and Prof. Ellen Desmet
Council of Europe Handbook: Family reunification for refugee and migrant children – Standards and promising practices (2018-2020)
In May 2017, the Committee of Ministers adopted the Council of Europe Action Plan on Protecting Refugee and Migrant Children in Europe. It outlines concrete actions to be undertaken by the Council of Europe, grouped around three pillars. Assisting children and families in restoring family links is one of the actions under the second pillar aimed at providing refugee and migrant children with effective protection.
In the framework of the Action Plan, the Office of the Special Representative on Migration and Refugees has published a Handbook on family reunification for refugee and migrant children, available in English and in French.
Researcher: Prof. Ellen Desmet
Handbook for guardians of unaccompanied minors
Researcher: Prof. Ellen Desmet
Publications
Visiting researchers
Nikolett Takács (August 2018)
Nikolett's PhD project focuses on asylum law and human rights law, with particular attention to unaccompanied minor asylum seekers. She obtained a degree in law from the University of Miskolc and after that she started her PhD studies. She worked as an intern for 6 months at the Immigration and Asylum Office of Hungary. She is engaged in the Regional Academy on the United Nations where under the coordination of the IOM and the Academy she is part of a team which is examining the civil society engagement in the Global Compact for Migration. Nikolett carried out research at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway where she examined international and regional norms regarding the rights of the child in asylum cases. She obtained a scholarship from the Hungarian Ministry of Justice in order to carry out research at foreign universities to broaden her literature base for her dissertation. This way from the 17th until the 31st of August 2018 she had the opportunity to be a visiting researcher at Ghent University at the Migration Law Research Group under the supervision of prof. dr. Ellen Desmet.
Golam Nasibul Hoque (June 2017)