Current PhD students and their projects:
The new Closed Controlled Access Centres (CCACs) on the Greek hotspot islands are yet another layer of racialised containment for people who seek to enter ‘Europe’. To access legal assistance, people must overcome material infrastructure and policies that simultaneously illicit a sense of pervasive social control and abandonment. In this thesis project, I contest prevailing legal imageries of a space created by EU law—to disrupt the movement of racialised and gendered mobility—as an essentialised and static exceptional or humanitarian space. Utilising intersectional and decolonial theory, the project considers that the work of law is under-evaluated in the epistemic ‘othering’ of immobilised women in the EU hotspots as ‘outside’ law whilst deeply entrenched in it. I therefore unpack the legal processes, conduct and counter-conduct on the hotspots to understand the experience of women on the hotspots as a legal struggle. The implementation, interpretation and violence of law is constantly reinventing itself and responding to the mobility of women at the border. Through a combination of critical legal theory, doctrinal analysis and empirical work, I generate knowledge with women previously immobilised on the islands and by doing legal advocacy on the hotspot island of Samos. Situating women as the focal point of this study, I attribute significance to the processes of inclusion for some—the exception-to-the-exception—from the exclusion of the ‘other’ as continuing and renewing social and rights stratification of (im)mobilised women.
The thesis aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the complex landscape of asylum border procedures within EU Asylum Law, with a focus on their impact on asylum seekers' mobility, access to rights, and procedural guarantees. It examines the historical evolution of border procedures in the Common European Asylum System, highlighting their expanding scope and legitimization in the new Asylum Procedures Regulation proposed in the context of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. The thesis also tries to theorise border procedures by incorporating critical border theories, such as the 'shifting borders' theory and the concept of the 'state of exception', to construct a framework explaining the legal fiction of 'non-entry' applicable in border procedures. Furthermore, through an empirical examination of border procedures, it critically assesses the compatibility of border procedures with human rights. Consequently, the research delves into important legal, theoretical and empirical perspectives explaining how procedural means such as those of border procedures are used in the EU as a means to justify reduced procedural safeguards and (im) mobility of asylum-seekers.
My PhD project focuses on how people in the Horn of Africa navigate im/mobility in the context of environmental change. The relationship between environmental change and mobility is receiving growing attention in academia, policy, and development programming. The focus has tended to privilege movement, broadly distinguishing between voluntary migration (e.g. ‘migration as adaptation’), displacement (e.g. ‘environmental refugees’) or planned relocations of populations affected by climate change (e.g. sea level rise). An emerging literature has identified risks faced by those who do not move in the face of climate change, particularly focusing on people becoming trapped in place. Yet by privileging movement, existing research sets up mobility and immobility in binary terms, leaving unanswered questions about how immobility is experienced and structured. My research seeks to move beyond this mobility—immobility dichotomy to explore im/mobility as process, as relational, and as political.
Throughout the last decade, thousands of refugees and migrants in distress in the Mediterranean have been prevented from entering European ports, through interceptions and summary expulsions (‘pushbacks’) at sea, aggressive deterrence and ‘pullbacks’ to other countries, and denials of post-rescue disembarkation requests. This thesis explores the possibility of understanding such restrictions of refugees’ and migrants’ port access as constituting unlawful violations of the prohibition of racial discrimination, under international and regional law. This project joins the growing legal scholarship on racial borders – as well as that more broadly of critical race theory and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) – which explores how border enforcement upholds and perpetuates racial discrimination, most often through facially neutral policies and border violence.
The origins of climate change-induced migration discourse dates back to the 1980s when scientists and environmental activists argued that, left unaddressed, climate change could lead to mass displacement. Over 30 years later, those who seek asylum on the basis of environmental factors alone are offered no international legal protection. This research will:
This research is aimed at addressing this gap by proposing changes to the existing legal protections, ensuring those crossing borders as a result of climate change are protected. It will draw out the complexities of the topic reflecting upon and suggesting how the law should grapple with this important yet complex situation, with the aim of being influential to academics and policy makers on an international scale.
My thesis explores human mobilities related to anthropogenic climate change. It argues that current framings (i.e.climate refugees and migration as an adaptation strategy) offer limited tools for the understanding of mobilities that are taking place around the world due to climate change. Current narratives frame mobilities as an 'exception' in 'ordinary' life, an 'error' in the system resulting from rapid climate change; thus, human mobility is something to avoid, solve or prevent, unless it better allocates resources from one place to another (such as in migration as adaptation narratives). This idea of migration as an error, which is widespread in the social sciences, makes climate change an 'a-mobile' field characterized by sedentary epistemologies and methodological nationalism. Further, the dominant economic logic of these narratives makes invisible other worldviews and systems that guide the movements of people. Thus, in order to overcome these limitations, this project takes a critical distance from solution-oriented conceptualizations and seeks to develop ways to comprehend the different ways of mobilities in the context of climate change. The research is particularly interested in the mobility of ‘traditional’ populations and communities of Brazil, defined as culturally differentiated groups with their own social, cultural and economic conditions, maintaining specific relations with their ancestral territory and the environment they live in. The thesis argues that these relations with their territory place guide human mobility in the context of climate change. Notably, the increase of changes and modification or the mobility of places/territory are triggering and shaping human mobility. The concept of ‘places’ here is understood not only in physical terms but also in its relational terms as 'knots' (Ingold, 2011:148) where different agents, human and non-human, interact and influence each other. The argument finds a base in the work of Clark and Yusoff (2017), whose “geosocial formations," offers a means to explore how human and non-human forms of mobility are linked. Using this perspective, this research also engages with the so-called 'new mobilities paradigm' to investigate climate mobilities. The 'new mobility paradigm' is a distinctive form of social thought where movement is constitutive of social institutions and social practices. Mobility research examines social life through "different modes of mobilities and their complex combinations" (Sheller and Urry, 2016:11). Mobility encompasses human mobility along with the movement of images, ideas, materials, social meanings of place, and space. Therefore, it provides the tools to explore the co-transformational’ relations between human and non-human agents in the context of anthropogenic climate change.
Furthermore, the lack of critical engagement with the concept of climate change, represented as a problem to be solved by 'modern western society' risks reproducing colonial relations. This is because it easily falls into the idea that traditional populations are immobile and anchored to ancestral places, inflexible and deprived of agency – an approach which undermines their self-determination and self-governance. These narratives overlook the fact that colonial regimes structure the current (im)mobilities of traditional communities. The research proposes conceptualizing climate change through a lens that links the Anthropocene's origin to the conquest and colonization of the Americas. This period also led to the incarceration and containment of Americas' populations.
This thesis seeks to contribute to the creation of relations that are more just and humble towards traditional populations and communities by recognizing their agency - that is guided by distinct worldviews and relations with places - in processes involving human mobility. As a case study, the research engages with the Caiçara community of Nova Enseada, whose relocation in 2017 is related to the process of coastal erosion and rising sea level. The proposed research methodology will merge participatory and decolonial approaches in fulfilling its aims, two of which I will outline here. Firstly,this research aims to contribute to the creation of relations that are fairer towards traditional communities. Secondly, it seeks to incorporate and visibilize marginalised perspectives on human mobility in the context of anthropogenic climate change, arguing that these perspectives of mobility are fundamental to modes of self-determination and self-governance in the Anthropocene.
Daanika specializes in human rights law, focusing on access to justice and rights protections of the most marginalized segments of society. She was awarded an LLM with distinction from the University of Warwick in 2015, and is an internationally published author and editor in the fields of gender empowerment, climate change, law and mental health. Daanika joined the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London in 2020, to commence her doctoral studies as a recipient of the Principal’s Research Studentship.
Algorithmic profiling, automated risk assessment, pre-screening and pre-authorisation, emotion, voice and dialect recognition along with increased surveillance through fully automated drones, tracking devices, thermal sensors, and more — AI is now inevitably reshaping borders as it influences every other sphere it touches upon. While the transformation is taking place gradually yet decisively at the Schengen borders, the virtualisation of borders is also redefining access to the right to asylum.
This study follows a refugee's journey from the initial step to the final stage, examining how the AI-based systems encountered throughout the process enable/disable access to the right to asylum and compliance with the principle of non-refoulement at three key border stages: pre-border, at the border, and post-border. Through an analysis of specific AI technologies, the research aims to shed light on how the AI-integrated borders of the EU may influence the asylum-seeking process — whether through algorithmic profiling via information systems such as VIS and ETIAS before reaching the border, the use of automated surveillance drones upon border arrival, or the application of AI-based technologies in post-border asylum procedures and asylum decision making.
Marta is a Lecturer in law at the University of Exeter and a PhD candidate at Queen Mary, University of London’s School of Law. Her doctoral project consists of an investigation on the ways in which political populism has expanded its reach to the criminal and immigration law domains. More specifically, the thesis looks at the contemporary phenomenon of “human smuggling”, critically examines the application of the anti-smuggling provisions to counter the rescue activities carried out by the NGOs in the Mediterranean area and examines the wider implications that the criminalisation of human mobility has for the foundations of criminal law and the Rule of Law at large. Marta’s interests include the criminalization of migration in Italy and Europe, the externalization of border controls and the expansion of jurisdiction, the Transnational Organized Crime framework on human trafficking and migrant smuggling and the impact of populism on the Rule of Law.
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The Central Mediterranean route serves as a symbol of human suffering, where migrants and asylum seekers risk their lives to escape political turmoil, conflict, crises, and poverty. Despite these harrowing conditions, EU member states have not remained idle; however, their responses have predominantly prioritized containment and deterrence of irregular migration over life-saving efforts.
This research examines how states' omission to render assistance to migrants and refugees in distress may engage their international responsibility. It delves into the treatment and legal effects of omissions under international law, encompassing general rules outlined in Articles on State Responsibility (ARSIWA), along with other relevant special regimes such as maritime law, international human rights law, and international refugee law.
By delving into the legal nuances of omissions within the context of search and rescue and employing a doctrinal approach complemented by empirical evidence, the research investigates whether and to what extent omissions can be configured in terms of State responsibility and how may questions of attribution and causation be dealt with in within maritime search and rescue context.
Puangrat’s doctoral thesis addresses the rollback of citizen status and the right of nationals to return during pandemics. It focuses on the case of Thailand and Thai nationals abroad. Thailand’s requirements for the certificate of citizenship status beyond a Thai passport, the return quota, and the immigration penalty could all add up to the substantiation of additional immigration measures imposed against Thais abroad. Despite the limited effectiveness of travel restrictions, the resort to those anti-pandemic measures has been allowed by pandemic laws at the international level. This thesis thus examines how far the pandemic legal regime has affected the right of Thais to return. Furthermore, the phenomenon of the inconvenient return due to the recourse to travel restriction by the states of nationality may arise in the case of Australians and Canadians. This shows the tendency of the global situation that the potential influence of pandemic laws includes the reshaping of the citizen status of nationals abroad to become temporary semi-citizens during pandemics.
Read more about Puangrat Patomsirirak.
Ayesha Riaz is currently pursuing a PhD at Queen Mary University of London whereby she is investigating the relationship between the British State and Solicitors that help asylum seekers in the UK. She also works as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, School of Law. She previously worked at the largest legal aid firm in the UK and provided legal advice and assistance to those that are in vulnerable situations, such as detained and non-detained asylum seekers/victims of domestic violence and victims of trafficking.
This thesis examines the struggle for authority between UK asylum authorities and medical experts regarding the relevance of trauma-based illnesses to the determination of asylum claims. Two fields of expertise are engaged – medical diagnosis and asylum determination - which are in competition concerning the creation of knowledge and its consequences for those seeking asylum. The first part focuses on two issues: how asylum seekers’ immigration status determines their access to healthcare and how healthcare professionals accommodate these limitations with their duty to provide treatment. The second part analyses how the power to assess the mental health of asylum applicants for medical treatment and for immigration decision-making operates. This thesis therefore examines the coherences and discrepancies involved in these assessments which may have life or death consequences for those seeking asylum. The project uses a multi-disciplinary approach to analyse the relationship between law and medicine in the context of Refugee Law, with a combination of doctrinal and comparative approaches to law including international refugee and human rights law, domestic asylum law, asylum policies and mental health research.
Read more about Hasna Sheikh.
I examine in my PhD research the relationship between arbitrary power and the concept/rule of law in EU immigration law. I draw on political and legal theories about arbitrary power and law while exploring legal forms that characterise EU immigration law. I seek to appreciate how non-EU nationals may face the arbitrary exercise of power by national public authorities as facilitated by EU law.
Recent decades have witnessed a proliferation of policy developments in the fields of migration and asylum, which aim to curb irregular migration towards EU countries and diffuse responsibility for possible human rights violations to third countries and private actors. This phenomenon, referred to, inter alia, as ‘offshoring and outsourcing of migration control’ takes a variety of forms including visa requirements, carrier sanctions, providing financial incentives to third countries, posting immigration liaison officers, and undertaking joint patrols on the sea.
The question of responsibility allocation in the context of these measures is important and topical because the plurality factor present in such situations makes it difficult to determine and implement international responsibility. Although international law incorporates some legal tools that have the potential to address questions of shared responsibility, it is argued that they fall short of providing tailored solutions for cases of joint and cumulative types of shared responsibility, where due to the indivisible nature of the harm, it is difficult to assign responsibility to individual contributors. Ceren’s research aims to identify limits and challenges, if any, imposed by prevailing principles and establish to what extent the principle of joint (and several) responsibility can be applied to extraterritorial/ privatised migration controls.