VCML Fellows 2025

 

 

Natalie Maurer

Short bio

Natalie Maurer studied law at the Universities of Heidelberg and Gießen. During her studies, she worked as a student assistant in the interdisciplinary DFG research project “Human Rights Discourses in the Migration Society” (MeDiMi) and in the migration law firm of Prof. Dr. Stephan Hocks. Since 2023, she has coordinated the Refugee Law Clinic Giessen, where she has been offering legal advice on a voluntary basis since 2019. Her areas of interest include asylum and residence law, European constitutional law, human rights, in particular socio-economic human rights and feminist jurisprudence. Her first state examination in law was funded by a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and awarded by the study prize of the Juristische Studiengesellschaft Gießen e.V. and by the Hessian Ministry of Justice and the Rule of Law.

Description of the research project

Her doctoral project, supervised by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bast, has the working title “Illegalized employed migrants in Union law”. The work examines legal acts that address the employment of migrants who are illegalized under residence law. It takes a broad approach in order to identify the policy areas affected, the measures taken and the conflicts between them. The aim of the study is to investigate the hypothesis that “conflict situations” exist between these legal acts – on the one hand in the form of norm collisions and on the other through different framings of the phenomenon. According to a further hypothesis of the study, these conflicts can be resolved through an approach that places greater emphasis on fundamental and human rights obligations and is required under EU constitutional law.