Search Results (10)

The current global mobility paradigm suffers from a great paradox. The illegality of human mobility is manufactured through restrictive migration and asylum policies, which claim to address the supposed challenges of human mobility, such as erosion of border security, burden on the labour market, and social disharmony. On the contrary, they reinforce them, resulting in strengthened anti-migrant sentiments at the domestic level. The contradiction is that the more restrictive migration policies are and the more they are directed at containment of human mobility, the more counterproductive they become. The fact that the policies of the destination states are shaped through the votes of their citizens, and migrants are never part of the conversation which would bring the reality check of their lived lives, is a defining factor that enables state policies preventing and deterring access to territory and containing asylum seekers elsewhere. We demonstrate that this is the dynamic behind the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, as it thickens the European borders even further through harsher border procedures and expanded externalisation of migration control. Whereas the Global Compacts represent the paradigm of facilitated mobility and are a significant step in the right direction for moving beyond the defined paradox, the EU Pact represents the containment paradigm and showcases that the tension between the commitments and the actions of states is far from being resolved. Through an assessment of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum’s alignment with the Global Compacts, this article scrutinizes the trajectory of the global mobility paradigm since the adoption of the Global Compacts. Full article

Both the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees commit states to diversify and expand on labour migration opportunities, in particular by facilitating work-based ‘complementary pathways’ for the admission of refugees. Yet, almost four years after their adoption, such pathways remain limited in many cases. It is the aim of this article to examine the constraints posed by existing immigration laws to serve as an admission ground for people in need of protection and the key legal, policy and political issues that need to be addressed to allow the commitments related to labour migration pathways contained in the Compacts to be implemented in national legal systems. In so doing, this article applies a legal and political feasibility lens to evaluate why these pathways for persons in need of protection are often small-scale, underutilized by employers and unwelcoming to potential refugees. It employs a comparative case study methodology drawing on more than 30 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders at the international and national levels in Germany and Sweden. The article concludes that the main challenge to the political feasibility of opening work-based complementary pathways for refugees is politicians’ and policy makers’ traditional thinking of migration and asylum as separate domains. When it comes to challenges to legal feasibility, these stem from entry requirements, lack of sufficient interest among employers who are a key stakeholder in the facilitation of such pathways, as well as issues related to the security of status of potential beneficiaries of such measures. Full article

The quest for safe, orderly and regular migration underpins the UN Global Compact for Migration (GCM) and translates into “comprehensive and integrated” responses to large movements of refugees and migrants. The effort to de-compartmentalise the governance of cross-border human mobility through “comprehensiveness” shapes the overall search for greater policy coherence via regime interaction and shared responsibility within the GCM. A similar effort has been made at the EU level to overcome the “silos approach” characterising the distinct policies on migration, asylum, and border management. This parallelism is particularly meaningful as the reason is twofold: at the operational level, because of the role played by the EU in fashioning the cooperation models underpinning the GCM, which enhances the relevance of EU law and practice for the implementation of the GCM; at the normative level, because the GCM draws on four guiding principles—i.e., sovereignty, good governance, human-centricity, and the rule of law—which are also key features of the EU legal system. Departing from these premises, this article reveals the meaning of “comprehensive and integrated” responses to large movements of refugees and migrants in the GCM and EU border policies. It does so in order to provide a critical appraisal of the legal and policy implications of comprehensive approaches in the global and European governance of cross-border human mobility. Full article

The number of migrants increases globally due to natural disasters, global warming, and war conflicts. Inefficient and unsustainable construction approaches for migrant shelters have resulted from improper planning and design systems regarding lifespan, materials and techniques, and socio-cultural aspects. Therefore, the study aim has an incentive to assess the impact of the morphological, siting, and layout of zones and shelters for the long-term displacement prototypes considering sustainability concepts from social context, affordability, adaptability, low-impact construction materials, and techniques. Furthermore, applying the dynamic simulation IDA ICE 4.8 tool was cardinal to justify the comprehensive reported outcomes based on the bottom-up construction method after assessing energy and thermal comfort performance in seven cases. The energy performance assessment regarding heating reveals the superiority of the compact layout plan system, while the open-layout plan system is superior for electric cooling assessment. Concerning thermal comfort performance for the number of accepted hours category, the open-layout plan system is superior. Fanger indicators for thermal comfort assessment demonstrated the superiority of the horizontal-compact layout plan scheme. The carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration level assessment shows that the open-yard layout cases have better results than other systems. To conclude, sustainable prototypes for displaced people should involve several aspects such as lifespan, socio-cultural and affordability, thermal performance and energy-efficient, and environmental impact. The beneficiaries from the methods and the results of this study would be firstly the Syrian refugees in the Middle East context, then various places and involved people affected by the displacement issue globally. Full article

Human mobility in the context of disasters and climate change (HMDCC) is a complex problem, which is planetary in scope and intergenerational in its impact. From the mid-seventeenth century’s little ice age to the rising sea levels due to climate change, people have been driven to move by environmental factors for a long time. Yet, an international treaty regime that addresses the protection needs of persons mobile due to environmental factors has never been created. Against this backdrop, the Global Compacts were negotiated to reflect a “sophisticated” understanding of HMDCC, and their adoption enables cooperation on a wide range of policies and laws to this effect. Examining the implementation of the Global Compacts with respect to the commitments relating to HMDCC, this article finds that States and non-State actors have cooperated to address data gaps and to incorporate mobility considerations into national frameworks on climate change and disaster management. However, States must implement all dimensions of their commitments relating to HMDCC, especially with regards to the facilitation of migration as an adaptation strategy to disasters and climate change, in order to build a comprehensive approach. Full article

‘Vulnerability’ is flooding EU asylum law. Based on the analysis of the ECtHR’s case-law in deportation cases, the EU Directives’ provisions towards ‘vulnerable’ asylum applicants, and their implementation in the domestic legislations and practices of two EU member states that were studied as part of the VULNER project (Belgium and Italy), this contribution establishes a typology of the various legal and bureaucratic functions that ‘vulnerability’ has received in the EU. It also reflects on the ‘juridification’ trend at play, the implementation challenges that have emerged as a result, and how they are currently being addressed in the EU. Full article

This article analyses the (potential) role of the Global Compact for Migration and the Global Compact for Refugees in the development of EU law concerning asylum seekers who arrive at the external borders of the European Union (EU). Under the current rules, many asylum seekers are refused entry to the territory of the EU and detained while their asylum claim is examined in a border procedure. Some EU Member States even push back asylum seekers without a proper assessment of their needs for international protection. Despite widespread violations of the fundamental rights of asylum seekers at the external borders of the EU, the New Pact on Migration and Asylum presents the new integrated border procedure as an important instrument to ‘deal with mixed flows’ and make the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) work. However, the EU legislator has not substantiated the claim that border procedures will contribute to achieving the aims of the CEAS, such as the creation of a uniform, fair and efficient asylum procedure and prevention of abuse. Neither does the Pact provide a solution for pushbacks and systematic use of detention, nor does it guarantee the quality of the asylum procedure, including the identification of persons with special needs. The Pact therefore not only fails to comply with the EU’s own Better Regulation guidelines and protect the fundamental rights of asylum seekers, but it also ignores the standards of the Global Compacts. What role can the Global Compacts still play in the ongoing negotiations over the Pact? Full article

In recent times, the CJEU has started to develop its judicial response to the “rule of law crisis” in some Member States. On the one hand, this new trend has emerged also as a reaction to some national reforms concerning asylum and migration law. On the other hand, the CJEU in protecting the EU founding values has deployed its “traditional” competences attributed to it by the EU Treaties, namely the mechanisms of the preliminary ruling procedure and the infringement procedure. Against this background, this contribution aims at investigating this new CJEU’s jurisprudence through the lens of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration. This will lead us to reflect on how the CJEU’s caselaw could be seen as an effective tool to enhance the rule of law and protect third-country nationals, at least within the EU, and indirectly contributes to increasing compliance with some of the commitments laid down in the Global Compacts, regardless of the position taken by some recalcitrant EU Member States with respect to these documents. Full article

This paper examines the “protective potential” of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants vis à vis existing commitments to fundamental rights within the European Union (EU). The relationship between the two normative frameworks is scrutinised to establish the extent to which the two might be mutually supportive or contradictory, since this determines the Compacts’ capacity to inform the interpretation of EU fundamental rights within the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This paper explores this protective potential through three of the Compacts’ key guiding principles: respect for human rights and the rule of law, the principle of non-regression, and the principle of non-discrimination. The Compacts’ commitments to the first two are presented as sites of coherence where the Compacts concretely express pre-existing protections within EU law and provide a blueprint for implementation in the migration sphere. However, the Compacts’ principle of non-discrimination reveals an area of friction with EU primary law. It is argued that the implementation of this principle can address the inherently discriminatory system underpinning EU law. Within the EU, rather than undermining international and national human rights obligations, the Compacts present an opportunity to refine the implementation of existing EU fundamental rights obligations applicable to migrants and refugees. Full article

The turbulent transition of power from the Ghani administration to the Taliban regime has not only signalled a death knell to the fundamentals of representative democracy, but it has also provided fertile ground for the large-scale exodus of refugees into neighbouring nations. In view of this, a scrutiny of the Indian state’s response to the influx of Afghan refugees is warranted. India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, nor to the 1967 Protocol, and, in the absence of any concrete national refugee law and policy, Afghans who are seeking refugee status are processed on a haphazard case-by-case basis. In chalking out a future course of action, this paper aims to analyse India’s response to the possible Afghan refugee inflow in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover and in light of India’s recent endorsement of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR). Against the backdrop of the limited mandate of the UNHCR and the lack of “political will” from the successive governments, we contend that the Supreme and High Courts of India have been instrumental in construing a tentative shield of protection for persons already in the country, which is working out of a judicial form of the endorsement of the non-refoulment principle, in the absence of legislative and executive commitments, and the preferential “acts of kindness” strategy, which discriminates amongst different refugee groups as per origin or religious belief. Moreover, it is argued that the GCR has made few inroads into the overall paradigm as to how refugees are perceived in India. The research concludes that India must enact legislation on refugees for any constructive engagement beyond archaic quick-fix solutions. Full article