Migration Law (national - European - global)

In this research area, I address issues in national, European and international migration law issues. I am interested in migrants' rights and in how migrants' social, political and economic participation can be ensured through legal means. Another area of interest is legal issues in European migration governance. Among other things, my research addresses issues of asylum law, border protection and access to international protection for asylum seekers. I am particularly interested in labour migration issues and the relationship between labour migration and global inequality. My main focus is on migrants' agency and the role of their home and transit countries in shaping the process of labour migration.

Ongoing projects and work in progress:

• Agency in labour migration law

This project analyses the agency of various actors (including migrants, states, intermediaries, employers) in current European labour migration regimes and seeks to conceptualize legal agency in migration matters. It combines legal and anthropological research to understand how migrants navigate and use migration law to realize their own aspirations and how this contrasts with the agency of other actors in the field. A specific focus is on the role of rights for legal agency. The project seeks to identify if and how labour migration law and the corresponding legislative processes reflect the interests of migrants and their countries of origin.

I address these issues in the context of the Max-Planck-Fellow group JUST MIGRATION – labour migration regimes in transnationalized contexts, which I lead at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Germany).

• The Political Economy of Labour Migration Law

In this project, I seek to understand the political economy of labour migration law. I explore the interplay between the right to property and migration law, and ask, more generally, how labour migration law is shaped by economic structures and power relations. I am particularly interested in the role individual rights play in this context and how they are used to alter power relations. I seek to clarify diasporas' role in the political economy of migration law (remittances, affidavits). From a historical perspective, I want to understand how property protection shaped migrants’ rights over time and how this has been linked to colonial practices and other forms of transnational economic exploitation.

I am pursuing this project, among other venues, within the Cluster of Excellence “Transforming Human Rights” at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

• Struggles about Citizenship and Belonging

In this project, I address issues of belonging and citizenship rights. One research focus is the role of time and temporality in migration law and its related modes of inclusion and exclusion. I investigate how migration law reflects and shapes images of our societies' past, present, and future and their ideas of belonging. In addition, I am interested in mobility rights and social rights of EU citizens and how they have changed over time. Overall, the aim is to understand the defining features of the respective modes of belonging and their legal shape.

I’m currently working on two articles on the relation between temporal conceptions of migration and belonging. In these papers, I introduce simultaneity as a concept to better grasp the practice of transnational migration and to contribute to de-centring migration law by emphasizing not the regulatory interests of receiving states, but rather the perspective of migrants (and their countries of origin).
 

• Recent Publication:
• Farahat, A., The “Hungry Beast” of Migration Control and the Future of the Superdiverse European Migration Society, European Law Open (ELO) 3 (2024), 473–479, https://doi.org/10.1017/elo.2024.55.

International and National Human Rights Law

Human rights protection is a cross-cutting issue that runs through all of my research areas. Human rights are particularly significant in handling distribution conflicts and issues of migration management and participation. My specific interest is in social rights, particularly equal treatment and the rights of migrant workers and refugees.

Conflicts over Solidarity and Recognition in Constitutional Law

My research in this area focuses on institutional issues related to conflicts over solidarity and recognition in national and European constitutional law. My research is based on the premise that averting the destructive potential of conflicts is crucial to protecting public discourse and institutions in a democracy. I investigate mechanisms for conflict resolution through law and how constitutional law can aid in productive and integrative conflict resolution. Since conflicts over solidarity often have a transnational dimension, my research in this area is comparative, encompassing the national legal systems of EU member states and EU constitutional law.

Ongoing projects and work in progress:

• Transformative Constitutionalism and Constitutional Openness

This project examines the apparent contradiction between openness and explicit constitutional aspirations in Transformative Constitutionalism, contrasting it with the principled openness characteristic of liberal constitutionalism. It further examines the interplay between the preservative and transformative functions of constitutional law. Finally, it asks whether, and by what means, openness is – and ought to be – more effectively secured within the EU’s transformative constitutionalism.

This project is part of a collaborative project on Transformative Constitutionalism in India and Europe led by Philipp Dann and Arun Thiruvengadam in the context of the Indo-European Advanced Research Network (IEARN)

• Recent publications:
• Farahat, A. Ein unionsweiter Mobilitäts- und Grundrechtsraum (Art. 3 Abs. 2 EUV), in: Bast, J./von Bogdandy, A. (Hg.), Unionsverfassungsrecht, Nomos (2025), 239–297, doi.org/10.5771/9783748945468 – open access.
• Farahat, A./Violante, T., Promoting European Constitutionalism? The Ambivalent Role of National Constitutional Courts from Solange I to Solange IV, Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (ZaöRV) 85 (2025), 569–597 (mit Teresa Violante), doi.org/10.17104/0044-2348-2025-2-569 – open access.
• Farahat, A./Hildebrand, M./Violante, T. (Hg.), Transnational Solidarity in Times of Crisis: How Law Shapes Critical Transformations of Our Time, Nomos (2024), 11–41, doi.org/10.5771/9783748919865 – open access.