Published Article

In the article, Luc discusses the potential of anthropological research methods and concepts to shed light on the experiences of vulnerability as they are lived by migrants, and to reveal and question the underlying social and political dynamics behind the increased success of vulnerability in legal reasoning. He also argues that anthropology can only bring a useful contribution to legal debates on “vulnerability” if the knowledge it produces is adequately translated into legal reasoning - which requires acknowledging the differences between the goals of anthropological analyses, which are all-encompassing and seek to depict human experiences in all their complexities, and legal conceptualizations, which require establishing clearly defined notions that can be operationalized in (relatively) certain ways by decision-makers on the ground and that allow them to strike a balance between competing interests.

The article is available in open access via Cambridge University Press here.