VCML Snapshots

The VCML-Snapshots video series features brief interviews with our workshop guests, offering insights into their work, research, and key themes from our discussions. These short conversations capture key takeaways and reflections, giving viewers a window into the topics explored while highlighting pressing questions in the field. By sharing these snapshots, we aim to extend the conversation from our workshops beyond the moment, fostering broader dialogue and engagement.

Dr. Jill Alpes is the Principal Investigator of the REMOVED project (Removal Infrastructures for Syrians in Lebanon and Turkey), hosted by the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University and the Institute for International Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. As a legal anthropologist of migration, Jill combines qualitative ethnographic (observations, in-depth interviews, life histories), legal (laws and judgments) and participatory approaches (future literacy labs). Author of a monograph published by Routledge entitled “Brokering High-Risk Migration and Illegality: Abroad at any cost,” Jill’s main research sites are in Cameroon and Lebanon, with additional fieldwork sites in Africa (Nigeria, Niger, Mali, DRC) and Europe (France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Turkey). As part of the ERC project DISSECT (2021-2024), Jill studied the production of evidence for pushback cases at the European Court of Human Rights. As part of this research project, she published: 

Alpes, M.J., Baranowska, G., (2024), “The politics of legal facts: The erasure of pushback evidence from the European Court of Human Rights”, Law and Social Inquiry.

Baranowska, G., and Alpes, M.J., (2024),“Official recognition of unofficial practices in M.A. and Z.R. v Cyprus: Examining the politics of legal facts for pushback cases at the ECtHR,” RLI Blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration.

J. Alpes and G. Baranowska. (2024) What’s beneath the iceberg in M.A. and Z.R. v Cyprus? The erasure of pushback evidence at borders, Border Criminology Blog.

Professor of law at the International, European and Comparative Law Centre of the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and member of the French Collaborative Institute on Migration, Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche is Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She is also an associate member of the Centre for Research and Studies on Fundamental Rights at University Paris Nanterre, the Centre for Migration Law at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Global Migration Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the Border Criminology group at Oxford University School of Law, and the Centre for the Legal Study of Borders and Migration at Queen Mary University of London. Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche carries out researches that focus on evaluating the legitimacy of the political systems of the European Union and its Member States. In particular, she studies the effectiveness of the fundamental rights protection, notably examining the situations of exceptions and considering the conditions of margins. Thus, the serious crises which allow the concentration of powers and the restriction of rights, as well as the legal confinement which can conduce to power abuses and rights infringements are its main area of research. She concentrates her analysis on the EU immigration and asylum norms and their compatibility with international and European instruments of human rights protection. As junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France from 2012 to 2017, she led a research project on “The finis and the limes – Thoughts on the constitutional identity of the EU through the prism of migration and asylum law”. The MOEBIUS research project she currently conduces as Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France deals with “Sovereignty ordering migrations inside European borders. Uses v. Ethics”. She is member of the scientific committee of the Agency of the EU for Fundamental Rights. All her activities can be followed on her personal webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/marielaurebasiliengainche/home.

Florian F. Hoffmann is a Professor of Law at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil, a co-speaker of the UNHCR Cátedra Sérgio Vieira de Mello in Refugee Studies at PUC-Rio and an associate researcher at the Human Rights Center of the Law Department (Núcleo de Direitos Humanos). In this video he speaks about his current research on the concept of legal infrastructures and infrastructuring processes as a central analytical framework for understanding the complex dynamics of migration and border regulation in South America.

VCML Snapshot interview with Prof. Hoffmann