Call for Papers
Workshop: The Role of Law and Courts in Migration Politics
13.–14. November 2025 | Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
The Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society invites you to participate in the workshop „The Role of Law and Courts in Migration Politics”, which will take place on 13 and 14 November 2025 at the LeuphanaUniversity of Lüneburg. The keynote will be given by Dr Pablo Ceriani Cernadas, Vice-Chair of the UN Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
The workshop will provide a forum for critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of law and courts in migration policy. The focus is on the question of how legal norms, categories and institutions not only regulate migration, but also constitute it - for example through classifications such as ‘refugee’, ‘labour migrant’ or ‘irregular’. These legal constructions are not neutral but contribute to the creation of difference and inequality.
At the same time, the workshop aims to explore the ambivalent relationship between migration, law and the judiciary: Courts appear both as protective authorities of individual rights and as political actors whose decisions limit or legitimise the scope of migration policy. In a field of tension between claims to sovereignty and human rights, they are increasingly confronted with accusations of undermining democratic processes - a conflict that raises new questions about the rule of law, legitimacy and resistance.
We invite submissions that address these and related questions, such as:
• How does the law shape migrant subjectivity and status ascriptions?
• What scope do courts open up or limit for shaping migration policy?
• How do political actors react to legal control - through circumvention, adaptation or confrontation?
• What role do courts play in the definition of protection categories or in access to rights?
• What does the use of law and courts reveal about the democratic constitution of current migration policy?
We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions from the fields of law, political science, social sciences and cultural studies. We look forward to an academic dialogue on the productive and conflict-laden role of law and judiciary in migration policy.
Submission deadline: 31 July 2025
Format: Abstracts (approx. 500 words) please send to lila.garcia@leuphana.de
Language of the event: English