Professor of Migration Law
Nog verdere perfectionering van het grensbewakingsbeleid staat hoog op allerlei agenda’s. Maar waarschijnlijk is het juist die perfectionering die het aantal op zee omgekomen migranten gestaag heeft laten stijgen.
Nederlands Juristenblad 2024 (36), p. 2985
EU arrangements for cooperation with third countries in the field of asylum and migration seek to contain refugees on territories outside the EU, at the same time the European Union undertakes action to support refugees in third countries and promotes the adoption of asylum legislation in third countries, as evident from fieldwork in Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Türkiye. The European Union sees the policies aiming at containment and at improving the asylum systems in third countries as closely related. However, from the perspective of third countries, there is a tension between asylum and containment; they do want to improve their asylum system, but they do not want to be the place where refugees and asylum seekers are contained. This chapter offers an insight into EU migration cooperation with Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Türkiye on the points of cooperation, democracy and rule of law, leading to the conclusion that refugee protection in third countries is less effective than it could be if promoting asylum were not to be part of European containment policies.
Asylum for Containment, in Sergio Carrera Nunez, Eleni Karageorgiou, Gamze Ovacik, Nikolas Feith Tan, (eds) Global Asylum Governance and the European Union’s Role, Springer, Cham, 167-179
Anna van Rijswijk (1841-1922) was een van de vele straatarme Amsterdamse vrouwen die zich tijdens de smerige negentiende eeuw uit de goot omhoog werkten en zorgden dat hun kinderen het beter hadden dan zij. Anna onderhield vanuit een kelder in de Haarlemmerstraat haar gezin (van zes kinderen, waarvan drie als baby overleden) door groente te verkopen. Haar kinderen woonden als volwassenen in hygiënische huizen, haar kleinkinderen gingen naar school, haar achterkleindkinderen gingen naar de universiteit. Ik ben een achter-achterkleinzoon, en ik ben haar heel erg veel verschuldigd. Vrouwen als zij maakten Amsterdam de stad die het nu is. Een ode.
Ode aan Anna van Rijswijk, Vrouwen van Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum 2024
The key hypothesis of the MIGJUST research project (which is funded by European Research Council grant ERC-AdG-2023- 101141743) is that there is a fundamental conflict in human rights case law on migration between the human rights approach, adopted by the Inter-American Court and Commission of Human Rights and the African Court and Commission of Human and Peoples’ Rights, and on the other hand the sovereignty approach of the European Court of Human Rights. The difference is also at work in the case law of the UN human rights bodies. The two approaches are reflected in, and are in turn reinforced by, political theory on migration justice. In academic studies, the conflict has not been noted because the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is considered to constitute the most developed version in international human rights law. The conflict between the two approaches is problematic because it goes against the international character of international law and hinders international cooperation. MIGJUST will address this problem by (a) analysing the under-studied case law of the Inter-American, African and UN human rights bodies; (b) carrying out a comparative analysis of the European, Inter-American, African and UN case law in the field of migration; (c) relating the varying positions to political theory on migration justice; and (d) developing methodologies to resolve the doctrinal conflict.
De nieuwe regering wil het hoger beroep in vreemdelingenzaken afschaffen. Het werd in 2001 ingevoerd om drie redenen: (1) om de doorlooptijd van bij de rechtbank aanhangige zaken te verkorten; (2) als snelle en effectieve manier om uiteenlopende jurisprudentie op één lijn te krijgen; en (3) om het voor de staatssecretaris mogelijk te maken om op te komen tegen onwelgevallige uitspraken van de rechtbank. Afschaffing van het hoger beroep doet dit teniet.
Verblijfblog, 3 juli 2024
In het Hoofdlijnenakkoord 2024 – 2028 beloven de PVV, VVD, NSC en BBB ‘het strengste toelatingsregime voor asiel en het omvangrijkste pakket voor grip op migratie ooit’. Verblijfblog bespreekt de belangrijkste maatregelen in een serie blogs. Het derde blog gaat over de (her)invoering van een zogenoemd ‘tweestatusstelsel’.
Verblijfblog, 28 juni 2024
De rust is voorlopig weergekeerd, maar de ME in Nederlandse universiteitsgebouwen: het was even wennen. De publieke discussie blijft echter turbulent, en nogal schematisch. De ene kant van het spectrum eist op hoge toon een academische boycot van Israël, een veroordeling van Israël, en veroordeelt het geweld van de ME. De andere kant vindt de bezetters van de universiteiten een stelletje vandalen, eist een veroordeling van Hamas en houdt het woord ‘antisemitisme’ binnen handbereik. Voor mij als academicus roept dit fundamentele vragen op over ons werk en onze rol. Moeten wij in grote maatschappelijke kwesties stelling nemen? Moeten we juist onze neutraliteit angstvallig bewaken? Zeven (niet noodzakelijkerwijs consistente) overpeinzingen. Spoiler: er wordt mij niet genoeg geaarzeld.
Gaza aan de Boelelaan, De Groene Amsterdammer 20 juni 2024
European policy interventions seek to improve asylum systems in neighbouring countries so as to enable containment of refugees and migrants outside Europe. While this is a consistent policy from a European perspective, from the perspective of third countries these two policy objectives are contradictory. On the one hand they would like to improve their asylum systems; on the other hand they find it unreasonable to bear even more of the brunt of migration issues that often are an effect of European foreign policy. This special issue of the European Journal of Migration and Law brings together analyses of this by researchers from Turkey (by Gamze Ovacık, Meltem Ineli-Ciger and Orçun Ulusoy), Tunisia (by Hiba Sha’ath and Fatma Raach), Serbia (by Rados Djurovic), Morocco (by Sara Benjelloun) and Egypt (by El-Sayed). All these articles are accessible (for the time being partly behind a paywall….) here.
Introduction to the Special Issue Asylum for Containment: The Contradictions of European External Asylum Policy, European Journal of Migration and Law 26(2024)2, 147-153
A key assumption of European policy makers is that the introduction of migration restrictions reduces the volume of irregular migration. Our analysis addresses this assumption by looking at the spike of irregular migration on the Aegean in 2015-2016 through a stylized model. Our stylized model does not pretend to fully capture the decision-making process of either people in need of international protection or of people considering to act as smugglers. We have abstracted from many aspects which are known to be relevant.
Our model does allow us to examine the impact of restrictive migration policies. While policy makers and much of the academic literature assume that restrictive policies reduce the flow of migrants, our analysis shows that the restrictive measures which migrants and smugglers expect considerably increase the flow before the introduction of restrictive policy measures, while resulting in a reduction only after their enforcement. In other words, restrictive migration policies have ambiguous effects. On the one hand they result in spikes (perceived in 2015-2016 as a migration crisis), while on the other hand restrictive migration policies may contribute to a lower aggregate volume of migration in the long run.
This means that the peaking number of asylum seekers in Europe in 2015-2016 (resulting in the perceived migration crisis) were an unintended effect of restrictive European migration policies. If people in need of international protection would not have had reason to expect restrictive policy measures any moment, the peak of people crossing the Aegean would, according to our stylized model, have been at 70.000 people in the spring of 2016, instead of the 212.168 people who actually crossed in October 2015. This is an unintended effect of restrictive policy; this effect has been a key ingredient of the perceived migration crisis in 2015-2016.
According to our stylized model, if people in need of international protection would not have had reason to expect restrictive policies, the total number of people crossing the Aegean over the period 2015-2020 may have been up to 20 percent higher. However, this possibly larger number of people would have arrived more gradually, which would have been more manageable in terms of reception of asylum seekers, asylum procedures, and security checks.
And finally, according to our model, financially supporting hosting countries for providing humanitarian and socio-economical aid to refugees has reduced the number of people who were willing to pay a smuggler in order to travel to Europe. In other words, the effects of providing funding for refugees in Turkey has had unambiguous, positive effects on reducing the volume of irregular migration towards Europe and deaths at the borders.
Gerard van der Meijden, Orçun Ulusoy, Erik Verhoef & Thomas Spijkerboer: Towards A Stylized Model of Dynamics on the Market for Smuggling Services, Brussels: Centre for European policy Studies (CEPS), December 2023
Het ‘memorandum van overeenkomst’ tussen Ethiopië en het door geen enkele staat erkende Somaliland is in Somalië als een bom ingeslagen, schrijft NRC (3/1). Voor de volledigheid: ook Nederland heeft Somaliland behandeld alsof het een onafhankelijke staat is. De Dienst Toezicht en Vertrek van het ministerie van Justitie sloot op 25 juni 2014 een ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ met de Somalilandse immigratiedienst, op grond waarvan Somalilandse vreemdelingen naar Somaliland kunnen worden uitgezet. De tekst van dit document is niet openbaar. Het is niet bekend of op grond van dit document daadwerkelijke uitzettingen hebben plaatsgevonden.
NRC 4 januari 2024