November 24, 13:30-14:30, Hebdomadars room, St Andrews. Click here to join the meeting.
Professor Nick Gill, Exeter // Chair: Professor Nissa Finney, St Andrews // Discussant: Dr Vanessa Schofield, St Andrews
Inside Asylum Appeals: Access, Participation and Procedure
Appeals are a crucial part of Europe’s asylum system, but remain poorly understood. Building on insights and perspectives from legal geography and socio-legal studies, and drawing on hundreds of ethnographic observations of appeal hearings as well as research interviews, this presentation paints a detailed picture of the limitations of refugee protection available through asylum appeals. Although refugee law can appear dependable and reliable in policy documents and legal texts the discussion offers a unique insight into the reality that myriad social, political, psychological, linguistic, contextual and economic factors interfere with, and frequently confound, the protection that it promises during its concrete enactment. Combining evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom, the presentation therefore evokes a clear sense of the fragility of legal protection for people forced to migrate to Europe.
