Migrationsrecht (national - europäisch - global)

In diesem Forschungsbereich befasse ich mich mit Fragen des nationalen, europäischen und internationalen Migrationsrechts. Es geht um die Frage, wie soziale, politische und wirtschaftliche Teilhabe von Migrantinnen und Migranten sichergestellt werden kann und welche Rechte Migrantinnen und Migranten haben. Zudem befasse ich mich mit aktuellen Rechtsfragen der europäischen Migrationsverwaltung.

Aktuelle Projekte und Publikationsvorhaben:

·        JUST MIGRATION – labour migration regimes in transnationalized contexts (MPI für Sozialanthropologie, Halle (Deutschland)
This project analyses migrants’ agency 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. 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.

·       The European Society of Immigration
The goal of this project is to conceptualize the European society of immigration in the light of EU core constitutional law. I understand the European society of immigration as a super-diverse society of citizens and inhabitants. Using Art 2 TEU as a yardstick, I seek to develop normative principles that guide the regulation of inclusion and exclusion in the European society of immigration. This yardstick helps to critically assess current EU Asylum and Migration Law as well as Member State law.

·       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.

·       Struggles about Citizenship and Belonging
Here, 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.

 

 

Internationaler und nationaler Menschenrechtsschutz

Der Menschenrechtsschutz stellt ein Querschnittsthema dar, das sich durch alle meine Forschungsbereiche zieht. Sowohl die Bearbeitung von Verteilungskonflikten als auch Fragen der Migrationsverwaltung und der Teilhabe von Migration sind Bereiche, die stark von menschenrechtlichen Garantien auf völkerrechtlicher Ebene geprägt sind. Mein spezifisches Interesse im Menschenrechtsschutz gilt den sozialen Rechten, dem Recht auf Gleichbehandlung und den spezifischen Schutzrechten von Wanderarbeitnehmern und Flüchtlingen.

Aktuelle Projekte und Publikationsvorhaben

·        Migrants Rights as Human Rights
In this project, I examine the “humanrightization” of labour migrants' rights in the institutional competition between the UN and the International Labour Organization (ILO). I ask which actors promoted labour migrants’ rights in which institutional setting, at what historical moment, and under which conditions these rights have been understood and claimed as human rights.

·        Protection Against Collective Expulsion as a Human Right
The project deals with the history of Art. 4 AP 4 ECHR and traces the development of protection against expulsion in the case law of the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. The envisaged article juxtaposes the rather conservative reading of protection against expulsion as a right between states with the modern understanding of protection against expulsion as a human right. Moreover, it critically appraises the dominant reading that the procedural dimension of this right is the result of a recent and dynamic treaty interpretation.

Solidaritäts- und Anerkennungskonflikte im Verfassungsrecht

Meine Forschung zum nationalen und europäischen Verfassungsrecht beschäftigt sich in erster Linie mit institutionellen Fragen der Bearbeitung von Solidaritäts- und Anerkennungskonflikten. Dabei spielt die Rolle von Gerichten und das Thema der Gewaltenteilung eine besondere Rolle. Es geht aber auch um die Frage, wie in einer demokratischen Gesellschaft Konflikte offen ausgetragen werden können, ohne dass sie destruktiv und zerstörerisch wirken. Die zentrale Forschungsfrage richtet sich also darauf, Mechanismen der Konfliktbearbeitung durch Recht zu verstehen und zu erforschen, wie das Verfassungsrecht zu einer produktiven und integrativen Konfliktbearbeitung beitragen kann. Da diese Konflikte eine grenzüberschreitende Dimension haben, ist meine Forschung in diesem Bereich auch stark vergleichend angelegt und bezieht die nationalen Rechtsordnungen der EU-Mitgliedstaaten ebenso ein wie das Verfassungsrecht der EU.

Aktuelle Projekte und Publikationsvorhaben:

·        Conceptualizing the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice from a European Constitutional Law Perspective
This article examines the constitutional implications of three central areas of conflict in the AFSJ from a constitutional human-rights perspective: Conflicts between freedom and security, shifting increasingly from internal to external borders in the European mobility space; between individuals and public authority,  rendering the relationship between EU citizens and non-EU citizens increasingly relevant; about solidarity between the Member States, but also between the EU and third-country nationals in need of protection. The article shows that it is still open whether the promise and potential of EU constitutional law as a normative frame and source of imagination for further integration of the European society will be realized.                                        

·        Transformative Constitutionalism and Constitutional Openness
This article examines the seeming contradiction between openness and explicit constitutional aspirations in Transformative Constitutionalism as opposed to the principled openness of liberal constitutionalism. In doing so, it also discusses the relation between the preserving power and the transformative power of constitutional law more generally. It asks if and how openness is and should be (better) secured in the transformative constitutional(ism) of the EU.

Abgeschlossene Projekte:

·        Transnational Solidarity Conflicts – Constitutional courts as players in and fora for conflict resolution (2017–2024), funded by the German Research Foundation
In this project, we have analyzed the role of constitutional courts in dealing with transnational solidarity conflicts during and in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis. The project compared the approaches and case law of various domestic constitutional courts in Europe, and examined the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in such solidarity conflicts.