IMISCOE Panel

There is an increasing trend in Europe of relying on vulnerability assessments to implement asylum policies in their various dimensions, from resettlement programmes to asylum and border procedures. The overall objective is to tailor the implementation of EU asylum law, in a way that considers the specific protection needs of the most vulnerable refugees.

But as it is being imported within the conceptual toolbox of European asylum governance, ‘vulnerability’ changes in nature. It evolves from a diagnosing concept that depicts disadvantaged positions resulting from socially embedded and ever evolving human experiences, into a bureaucratic label that serves to identify the refugees who will be given additional advantages and access to some rights, depending on their position at a given point in time.

As a result, ‘vulnerability’ acquires exclusionary effects, which remain implied behind a (relatively) broad consensus on the need to protect the most ‘vulnerable’ – without clear understanding of who qualifies as ‘vulnerable’ nor of how they should be protected. It also sustains resistance strategies among refugees, who seize the vulnerability label to gain agency.

The objective of the panel will be to question and unveil these implied assumptions, based on a socio-legal analysis of existing vulnerability assessments criteria and processes in various bureaucratic contexts inside and outside Europe, and an empirical study of the main life challenges faced by asylum seekers and refugees – including how these challenges are affected by prolonged uncertainties. All papers are based on the findings from the Horizon 2020 VULNER project.

The panel will be scheduled in the programme of the 19th Annual IMISCOE Conference, on "Migration and Time: Temporalities of Mobility, Governance, and Resistance", taking place in hybrid format at OsloMet University, from 28 June – 1 July 2022.

Participants to the panel are:

Dr. Luc Leboeuf | VULNER’s scientific coordinator |Department of Law & Anthropology of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Dr. Sophie Nakueira | VULNER’s WP leader on Africa | Department of Law & Anthropology of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Melissa Anderson | VULNER member of the Canadian team | York University

Prof. Dr. Dagmar Soennecken |VULNER member of the Canadian team | York University

Ritika Tanotra |VULNER member of the Canadian team | York University

Prof. Dr. Sylvie Sarolea | VULNER’s WP leader on Belgium | Catholic University of Louvain

Dr. Francesca Raimondo | VULNER member of the Belgium team | Catholic University of Louvain

Zoé Crine | VULNER member of the Belgium team | Catholic University of Louvain

Chair: Prof. Dr. Hilde Lidén | VULNER WP leader on Norway | Instituut for Samfunnsforskning

Find out more about IMSCOE conference here.

We’re looking forward meeting you there!