Articles for category: Focus

We are at war

The state of the European Union's asylum and migration policy can be summed up as follows: 20 years after the attacks on the Twin Towers, the "war on terror" has become both a cause of people on the move, and serves at the same time as the normative underpinning for the unimaginable arms race that has taken place at the external borders of the EU. Legitimised by the political leadership of the European Union, it is now a reality that the principles of the rule of law have ceased to apply at the EU's external borders without consequence.

9. November 2021

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Counterterrorism measures as a migration control device

While concerns over terrorism have not shaped Italian migration policy in a comprehensive way, the increased use of the administrative measure of expulsion of foreigners for counter-terrorism purposes must be questioned. It poses serious challenges to fundamental rights and rule of law principles and might foster a shift from a punitive to a preventive approach in the field of migration control.

7. November 2021

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From Opposing the Wall to Becoming it

As much as the comparative study of migration policies has developed recently, it still suffers from a blazing assumption: that states have equal sovereign power to determine their migration policy according to their own interests. The notion of “externalization”, so widely discussed nowadays, reminds us of asymmetries of power. In cases of extreme asymmetry though, as in the relation between Mexico and the United States, the spaces for sovereign decision making on migration policy are extremely thin to nonexistent.

5. November 2021

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Editorial: Can a Pandemic Law-Making Exercise Promote Global Health Justice?

Amid the unfolding „moral catastrophe“ of COVID-19, and across the entries in this symposium, we see a clamor for any pandemic law-making exercise to promote more justice in global health. However, this universally-embraced imperative masks a wide array of divergent views about the nature and sources of inequalities in global health, and in turn what should be done if we were to think beyond a narrow pragmatism of the moment.

4. November 2021

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Status, Accountability and Community after 9/11

Migration and citizenship law are politically configurable matters, like all others. All terrorist threats affect the state's duty to protect life, possibly state infrastructure and the sense of security in the public sphere. Picking up a connection to migration, in contrast to already existing domes-tic right-wing and left-wing extremism, can promise a quick reduction of external dangers in the political competition. Certainly, most people reject an equation of migration and terrorism as politically backwards. However, the image of migration being infiltrated by terrorism is effective.

4. November 2021

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The Covid-19 Pandemic, the Failure of the Binary PHEIC Declaration System, and the Need for Reform

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised unprecedented challenges for the global health framework and its long-term consequences are not yet in full sight. The alarm mechanism based on the declaration of Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), in particular, has been severely tested. As underlined by some scholars, a reform of the PHEIC’s mechanism would not solve the core issues of the alert and response system behind the IHRs, that do have mainly a political dimension.

2. November 2021

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Pandemics without Borders?

Any future international treaty or instrument on pandemic preparedness and response should refrain from further perpetuating an understanding of international borders that is primarily based on considerations of territoriality – rather, it should ensure that borders are no longer a constitutive element determining the international community’s effort of fighting the spread of dangerous diseases.

28. Oktober 2021

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Towards Member-driven International Pandemic Lawmaking

The COVID-19 pandemic has blatantly exposed the flaws of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its International Health Regulations (IHR) in addressing cross-border communicable diseases. We argue that the IHR is ill-designed: its rules and mechanisms are disproportionately tied to the Director General’s (DG) exercise of power, rendering insufficient member access to and participation in core decision-making and greater tendency of regulatory capture.

26. Oktober 2021

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