Category: Coloniality Academic

Spreiding in het volkshuisvestingsbeleid en rechterlijkeraciale afasie (met Mitchell Esajas, 20215)

Het spreidingsbeleid bij volkshuisvesting omvatte maatregelen
waarmee de Nederlandse overheid vanaf de jaren zeventig mensen
van kleur – migranten en staatsburgers zoals Surinamers en
Antillianen – geografisch wilde spreiden om vermeende ‘gettovorming’
te voorkomen. Op basis van juridische casuïstiek en archiefmateriaal
analyseren de auteurs hoe dit beleid discriminerende en racistische
effecten had, en wat groepen die zich ertegen verzetten aan het
non-discriminatierecht hadden. Regeringsfunctionarissen koppelden
werkloosheid, armoede, ‘achterstand’ en criminaliteit aan immigratie,
waardoor raciale aannames het beleid onmiskenbaar stuurden.
Hoewel ‘ras’ niet werd genoemd, werd het impliciet aangeduid – een
vorm van ‘racisme zonder ras’, passend bij het dominante zelfbeeld
van ‘witte onschuld’. De auteurs concluderen dat de rechtspraak
blijk geeft van raciale afasie: de bedoelde raciale effecten bleven
onbenoemd of werden ontkend. Toch is juridische actie niet zinloos
zolang activisten institutioneel racisme blijven agenderen en
overheden tot erkenning dwingen.

Mitchell Esajas en Thomas Spijkerboer, ‘Spreiding in het volkshuisvestingsbeleid en rechterlijkeraciale afasie’, in Staatscommissie tegen Discriminatie en Racisme (red), Samen voor gelijkheid. Een toekomstvisie op het non-discriminatierecht, 125-143

Arpita Basu, My City (2025; Kolkata Academy of Fine Arts)

Une légalité bifurquée : le droit de la migration en Europe (2025)

La majorité des analyses consacrées aux évolutions du régime migratoire en Europe font le constat de restrictions toujours plus vigoureuses. Or ces restrictions de circulation tranchent avec la mise en place d’un régime libéral de mobilité pour les Européens. Dans le cadre de l’Union européenne et du Conseil de l’Europe, une « légalité bifurquée » a ainsi été mise en place depuis l’après-guerre, et continue de l’être. Elle privilégie la mobilité des Européens (en particulier des classes moyennes), mais dénie des droits similaires aux ressortissants des pays anciennement colonisés.

« Une légalité bifurquée : le droit de la migration en Europe », Mondes & Migrations, 1350 | 2025, 49-57

Luce Turnier, Composition, 1970; Collection Jézabel Turnier-Traube (seen at Centre Pompidou, June 2025)

Asylum for Containment (2024)

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

Fransesco Sambiasi: Kunyu quanto (c.a 1645), world map with (on top) proof that the world is round (Universiteitsbibliotheek Universiteit Gent)

Global Migration Justice: Beyond conflicting approaches to migration in international human rights law (MIGJUST, 2024)

Copy from 1456 by ‘Alî ibn Hasan al-Hûfî al-Qâsimî’s of Muhammad al-Idrisi’s world map (1154).

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.

Global Migration Justice: Beyond conflicting approaches to migration in international human rights law (MIGJUST)

Introduction to the Special Issue Asylum for Containment: The Contradictions of European External Asylum Policy (2024, with Gamze Ovacık)

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 (open access) 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

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami: Innnspirit-ed, 2021 (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam)

Asylum for Containment / L’endiguement par l’asile (2023, with Bachirou Ayouba Tinni and 8 others)

Since 2015, Europe has intensified its cooperation with third countries in the field of asylum and migration. This report synthesises four country studies concerning European political, legal and financial instruments in this field in Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey. These very different case studies allow for the identification of fundamental challenges of European external asylum and migration policy (i.e. challenges which are not specific to just one third country).

Depuis 2015, l’Europe a intensifié sa coopération avec les pays tiers dans le domaine de l’asile et de la migration. Ce rapport synthétise quatre études de pays concernant les instruments politiques, juridiques et financiers européens dans ce domaine au Niger, en Serbie, en Tunisie et en Turquie. Ces études de cas très différentes permettent d’identifier les défis fondamentaux de la politique extérieure européenne en matière d’asile et de migration (c’est-à-dire les défis qui ne sont pas spécifiques à un seul pays tiers).

Bachirou Ayouba Tinni; Olga Djurovic; Rados Djurovic; Abdoulaye Hamadou; Meltem Ineli-Ciger; Gamze Ovacık; Fatma Raach; Hiba Sha’ath; Thomas Spijkerboer and Orçun Ulusoy: Asylum for Containment / L’endiguement par l’asile. EU arrangements with Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey / Dispositifs de l’UE avec le Niger, la Serbie, la Tunisie et la Turquie, Brussels: CEPS 2023

Iba N’diaye: Rhamb (1979), private collection

Coloniality and Case Law on the Australian Asylum Offshoring Scheme (2023)

Mohammed Kazem, Even the shadow does not belong to them (2018), Biennale Lyon 2022

This article presents an analysis of case law from Nauru, Australia and Papua New Guinea concerning the Australian offshoring scheme for asylum seekers. Its specific focus is to enquire to what extent and how colonial conceptual and ideological patterns of thought play a role in the reasoning of the courts involved. The analysis shows the Australian averseness to have its external action in former colonies subjected to international (human rights) law; and the juggling of sovereignty so that it justifies the administration of policies in former colonies. However, it also shows resistance to this coloniality, be it from actors with relatively little power. These insist on application of well-developed international human rights norms to Australian administration of its policies in two former colonies, and to some extent incorporate international power relations into their sovereignty reasoning. Other courts in the global South have engaged more fundamentally with core assumptions of international migration law.

Coloniality and Case Law on the Australian Offshoring Scheme, International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 7(2023)2, 132-148

Country reports ASILE project concerning Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey (2022)

As part of the EU funded ASILE project about the role of the EU in the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees, I co-authored reports about the implementation of EU migration instruments in Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey. These reports provide the material for a comparative report to be published in 2023.

Bachirou Ayouba Tinni , Abdoulaye Hamadou , Thomas Spijkerboer: Rapport de pays Niger

Olga Djurovic, Rados Djurovic, Thomas Spijkerboer: Country report Serbia

Fatma Raach, Hiba Sha’at, Thomas Spijkerboer: Country report Tunisia

Gamze Ovacık, Meltem Ineli-Ciger, Orçun Ulusoy, Thomas Spijkerboer: Country report Turkey

Muhammad al-Idrisi: World map (1154), copy from 1456 by Alî ibn Hasan al-Hûfî al-Qâsimî

Coloniality and Recent European Migration Case Law (2022)

This article interrogates European law as actively contributing to the undermining of migrants’ rights, since its inception. It claims that European case law in the area of migration is a continuation of a pre-existing characteristic: the tendency to privilege the interests of European states over those of migrants and of Europeans with transnational ties. The chapter thus examines the hypothesis that current-day migrants, being people from former European colonies, are subjected to a split form of legality that was perfected at the end of the colonial era. The legal system maintains the pretence of equality before the law while at the same time relegating colonial subjects to sub-standard legal protection by either excluding them from the application of human rights standards altogether or by lowering these standards. In addition to these two elements, a third legal governance technique with its origins in colonialism is the use of emergency powers themselves. Coloniality thus remains a structuring element of human rights law as it responds to migration. Naming and exposing this colonial structure may be helpful to the extent that it makes a legal and political critique possible, in addition to helping actors to navigate the field.

Coloniality and Recent European Migration Case Law, in Vladislava Stoyanova and Stijn Smets (eds), Migrants’ Rights, Populism and Legal Resilience in Europe, Cambridge University Press 2022, 117-138

Wissem Ben Hassin: Untitled (2018). Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Tunis; Collection of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs

Ik zie ik zie wat ik niet zie: Etnisch profileren en structurele rassendiscriminatie in het migratierecht (met Karin de Vries, 2022)

Hoewel de KMar inmiddels heeft laten weten niet door te zullen gaan met etnisch profileren in het kader van MTV-controles, is zulk profileren volgens de Nederlandse rechter niet in strijd met internationale discriminatieverboden. Dat strookt echter niet met de rechtspraak van het EHRM: als huidskleur, ook al is dat in een optelsom van criteria, beslissend is voor de vraag of iemand wordt staande gehouden is er steeds sprake van een onderscheid in strijd met artikel 1 Protocol 12 EVRM. Tegelijkertijd valt niet te ontkennen dat ras historisch steeds in grote mate bepalend is geweest, en nog steeds is, voor het antwoord op de vraag wie zich relatief vrij over de wereld kan bewegen, en wie niet. Die ongelijke toegang tot legale migratie komt voort uit het koloniale verleden en heeft tot gevolg dat mensen zonder rechtmatig verblijf vooral mensen van kleur zijn. Het verbod om expliciet onderscheid te maken op grond van ras maakt het echter onmogelijk om het structurele verband tussen huidskleur en verblijfsstatus juridisch te erkennen

Ik zie ik zie wat ik niet zie: Etnisch profileren en structurele rassendiscriminatie in het migratierecht, Nederlands Juristenblad 25 februari 2022, 549-555