Migration law legitimises the unequal global mobility regime that privileges Europeans and their descendants in settler colonies and under-privileges non-Europeans (The global mobility infrastructure, 2018; Bifurcation of people, bifurcation of law, 2018). An analysis of the history of international migration law shows that this has been the case since the early modern period. This is still the case today, both in the Anglo-American world (Coloniality and Case Law on the Australian Asylum Offshoring Scheme, 2022) and in Europe (Coloniality and Recent European Migration Case Law, 2022; Migration Emergencies in the European Postcolony, 2021; Race and the regulation of international migration, with Karin de Vries, 2021). In this manner, what purports to be ‘international’ migration law marginalises fundamentally different normative approaches in, among others, South America and West Africa (Migration management clientelism, 2021; The New Borders of Empire, 2019). The Eurocentric character of international migration law is not merely a characteristic of the regulation of migration, but is replicated in academic work (The geopolitics of knowledge production in international migration law, 2021). I have laid out my research agenda on the coloniality of migration law in a lecture, Confronting the colonial structure of international migration law (2020).
Academic publications
- Asylum for Containment (2024)
- Global Migration Justice: Beyond conflicting approaches to migration in international human rights law MIGJUST (2024)
- Introduction to the Special Issue Asylum for Containment: The Contradictions of European External Asylum Policy (2024, with Gamze Ovacık)
- Asylum for Containment / L’endiguement par l’asile (2023, with Bachirou Ayouba Tinni and 8 others)
- Coloniality and Case Law on the Australian Asylum Offshoring Scheme (2023)
- Country reports ASILE project concerning Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey (2022)
- Coloniality and Recent European Migration Case Law (2022)
- Ik zie ik zie wat ik niet zie: Etnisch profileren en structurele rassendiscriminatie in het migratierecht (met Karin de Vries, 2022)
- Migration management clientelism: Europe’s migration funds as a global political project (2022)
- Race and the regulation of international migration. The ongoing impact of colonialism in the case law of The European Court of Human Rights (with Karin de Vries, 2021)
- Migration Emergencies in the European Postcolony (2021)
- The geopolitics of knowledge production in international migration law (2021)
- Confronting the Colonial Structure of International Migration Law (lecture, 2021)
- The New Borders of Empire. European migration policy and domestic passenger transport in Niger (2019)
- The Global Mobility Infrastructure: Reconceptualising the Externalisation of Migration Control (2018)
- Legitimatie van ontruimingen in het hedendaagse Europa en Zuid-Afrika onder Apartheid (2018)
- Legitimizing Evictions in Contemporary Europe and Apartheid South Africa (2017)
Media publications
- Shortcomings in EU Cooperation for Externalization of Asylum: Lessons from Niger, Serbia, Tunisia and Türkiye (2023, With Bachirou Ayouba Tinni and 8 others)
- Asylum for containment: the bankruptcy of conditionality (2023)
- Maak van Tunesië niet het nieuwe ‘aanmeldcentrum’ aan de Europese buitengrenzen (2023, met Fatma Raach en Hiba Sha’ath)
- Outsourcen en afkopen van asielprocedures buiten EU is een onzalig en onrechtmatig plan (met 11 anderen, 2023)
- Repenser le droit international de la migration? (2022)
- International Migration Law and Coloniality (2022)