Conference Participation 6-8 March 2023
On March 2023, 6-8, Luc Leboeuf, VULNER scientific coordinator, took part to the final conference of the PROTECT project. He exchanged on the promises, challenges, and pitfalls, of relying on ‘vulnerability’ as a tool of asylum governance, as part of a panel that was organized by Christine Jacobsen to discuss PROTECT’s findings based on their fieldwork in EU border zones. PROTECT is a sister project to VULNER, which is funded under the same call of the EU Horizon 2020 work programme.
In his talk, Luc highlighted the need to recognize the conceptual transformations of ‘vulnerability’, as it turns into an operational tool that supports the implementation of asylum law. He emphasised the need to acknowledge the selective dimensions that the concept of ‘vulnerability’ acquires as a result, and he discussed the (dis)advantages associated the juridification of vulnerability – including the potentials in supporting state practices that better reflect migrants’ experiences, and the risks of conflicting with a human rights-based approach that is grounded in existing international protection standards, for example, because of an excessive individualization of states’ replies.
For more information on the PROTECT project and its findings, have a look at their website