1st Edition
Family Reunification in Europe Exposing Inequalities
This book provides a multi-disciplinary investigation of family reunification laws, policies and practices across the European Union.
Family reunification – the possibility for family members to (re)unite in a country where one of them is residing – has been high on the political agenda. Building on original empirical research with families and practitioners as well as in-depth doctrinal analyses, the book explores the fragmentation of legal rules, the gaps between formal regulations and practices, and their consequences for families across borders. Different contributions in the volume point to the growing inequalities among and within applicant families, based on residence status, gender, location, citizenship and socio-economic resources, due to the family reunification regimes currently in place. The book enhances interdisciplinary dialogue by providing clear insights into the specific contribution of migration law, private international law and social scientific analyses to the study of family reunification.
The book is aimed at researchers working on the topic of family reunification, as well as students of law and socio-legal studies and practitioners in the field of migration.
1. Exploring Inequalities in Family Reunification in Europe: Perspectives from Legal and Social Sciences
Ellen Desmet, Milena Belloni and Jinske Verhellen
Part I: Setting the Scene
2. A Right to Family Reunification in Europe: A Guide to the Labyrinth
Ellen Desmet
3. Personal Status Across Borders: Family Reunification Procedures Meet Private International Law
Sarah Den Haese and Jinske Verhellen
4. Families, Family Norms and Policies: Insights from the Social Sciences
Milena Belloni and Laura Cleton
Part II: Unveiling Inequalities
5. Developing a Right to Family Reunification, Immigrant Integration and Equality in Europe
Kees Groenendijk
6. How Race and Gender Function in European Family Migration Law
Betty de Hart
7. Better off Without Parents? Refugee Children and Family Reunification: Norms and Ethical Concerns
Irene Olivero
Part III: Accessing Family Reunification
8. Moving in Circles: The Beginning and End of Exercising Free Movement Rights
Hester Kroeze
9. Relationship Triangle and the Citizens Directive: Does Subsisting Marriage Exclude the Access to Derived Residence of Durable Partners?
Nicole Stybnarova
10. The “Humanitarian” Clause of the Dublin III Regulation: Limiting Entrance, Gatekeeping Values
Ifigeneia Intzipeoglou and Maria Nefeli Skotori
11. Family Reunification Policies in Italy: Ambivalences, Discrimination, Resistance
Francesco Della Puppa
Part IV: Proving Family Ties
12. Family Reunification for “Paperless” Eritrean Refugees: A Pie in The Sky or a Realisable Right?
Sara Arapiles and Daniel Mekonnen
13. The Recognition of Child and Polygamous Marriages in Belgium: Alignment Between Private International Law and Migration Law?
Leontine Bruijnen
14. Your Relationship is Genuine, but Your Marriage is Not. Defining Marriages of Convenience in EU and UK Law
Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova
15. Family Reunification and Administrative Citizenship: A Transnational Perspective
Milena Belloni and Gert Verschraegen
Part V: Navigating Regimes
16. Enforced Transnationalism: Refugees’ Family Lives in Germany Under Conditions of Separation and Waiting
Simone Christ and Benjamin Etzold
17. Reassembling the Right to Family Reunification for Refugees in Belgium through Social Work Practices of Welfare Bricolage
Pascal Debruyne
18. A Multi-Perspectivist Analysis of a Lived Family Reunification Experience: At the Junction of Co-Creative Research and Autoethnography
Giselle Corradi and Ellen Desmet
19. Domestic Violence Within the Securitisation of (Family and Love) Migration: The Case of Belgium
Giacomo Orsini and Laura Merla
Biography
Ellen Desmet is associate professor of migration law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University, where she founded the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw). Her research is situated at the intersection of migration law, human rights and legal anthropology, with a focus on asylum and family reunification. She serves as co-chair of the Human Rights Research Network, chair of the Belgian Refugee Council – NANSEN, and board member of the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR).
Milena Belloni is assistant professor in Migration and Global Mobility in the Department of Sociology at the University of Antwerp. Her research concerns migration dynamics in contexts of crisis, protracted displacement in Europe and in the Global South, refugee families and ethnographic methods. Her monographic study on the migration of Eritreans to Europe, The Big Gamble, is published (open access) by the University of California Press (2019).
Dirk Vanheule is full professor of law with the Government and Law Research Group at the University of Antwerp, where her is also member of the MIGLOBA network on migration studies. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law and migration and asylum law. He is also advocate, called to the Ghent Bar, working in the field of administrative and constitutional litigation. He is editor of Tijdschrift voor Vreemdelingenrecht (Belgian Journal for Migration Law).
Jinske Verhellen is professor of private international law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. Her research focuses on international family law and its interaction with migration law. She is a member of the Ghent University Interfaculty Research Group CESSMIR (Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees), the Ghent University Human Rights Research Network and the coordination team/editorial board of the CUREDI project (Cultural and Religious Diversity under State Law across Europe), coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
Ayse Güdük is a PhD candidate at Ghent University. Her research interests concern family reunification, marriage migration and transnational families from a socio-legal perspective. In September 2018, she started working for the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw) at Ghent University. She is currently in her final stages of her PhD on family reunification of Turkish migrants in Belgium, a study of lived experiences and legal consciousness.
