Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen defends his PhD on Access to Asylum and Migration Control

Thursday 17 September, 1 pm, Aarhus University

Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen will be defending his PhD dissertation titled “Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Offshoring and Outsourcing of Migration Control”.

The dissertation critically examines the compatibility of a range of current migration control practices with international refugee law. It concludes, among other things, that both European countries and a number of other states are in violation of core refugee and human rights protection by de facto preventing access to seek asylum.

The lecture and defense will take place Thursday 17 September, 1 pm, at

Institute of Law (Jura),
building 1342, auditorium 455 (4th floor)
Bartholins Allë
8000 Aarhus

The university will host a small reception afterwards for those attending.

Abstract

When does a refugee meet the State? The traditional answer would be when arriving at the border and uttering the magical word ”asylum”. Today, however, refugees are much more likely to meet the authorities of their prospective asylum country well before arriving at the border. Over the last decades migration control has increasingly moved to the high seas and the territory of transit and origin countries. Navy vessels are patrolling the Mediterranean and the Caribbean along the popular migration routes, and immigration officers are being deployed overseas to carry out pre-departure checks at airports and other travel hubs. At the same time migration control is increasingly outsourced to private actors. Under threat of financial penalties airlines today reject any passenger not in possession of a valid visa, private contractors are running detention centres, and private security companies employed to man border crossings.

In this dissertation the author traces and exemplifies these practices, which are often carried out far away from public eyes and scrutiny. At the same time this offshoring and outsourcing of migration control raises important questions under international refugee law. The refugee has always been the exception to the State’s sovereign prerogative to carry out migration control, necessitating that a door be kept open for asylum-seekers. But, does this commitment equally apply where migration control is carried out extraterritorially or by private actors? Governments have argued that neither the Refugee Convention nor other human rights instruments are applicable where migration control takes place beyond their borders or asylum-seekers are rejected by private actors such as airline officials. As a result, refugees encountering these forms of control are routinely denied access to asylum.

The present volume offers a critical examination of the reach and limits of international refugee law to situations of offshored and outsourced migration control. It argues that States do retain certain obligations even when migration control is carried out extraterritorially or by private actors. Consequently, it must be concluded that e.g. current EU policies and state practices in several respects conflict with international refugee and human rights law.

Yet, the application of human rights and refugee law to these situations is far from straight forward. The scope and nature of rights may be substantially reduced, and certain gaps in the legal framework persist where interpretation remains open. The dissertation also suggests how interpretation in this field might constructively develop as to better ensure access to asylum without undermining fundamental principles of international law. Lastly, a more general account is forwarded of offshoring and outsourcing practices as “politics through law”, where governments strategically seek to shift or deconstruct legal responsibilities otherwise owed by reference to law itself.

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