When: Thursday, 25 May 2023, 13:15
Where: Hörsaal 2 (H2, room A 218), University of Vienna, Department of Political Science, NIG, Universitätsstr. 7, 2nd floor, 1010 Vienna
Speaker: Judith Kohlenberger (WU Vienna)
Chair: Julia Mourão Permoser (IPW | University of Vienna)
The lecture will discuss frequent paradoxes in the realm of migration policy and management, which are often so naturalized that they remain unrecognized. Yet, they are symbolically and morally charged and serve to uphold the legitimation of the status quo. A particularly pertinent example is the “asylum paradox”, which describes the impossibility of legal access to (the right to) asylum. Given the impossibly of applying for asylum from abroad due to a general lack of legal pathways, refugees have to “break the law” to access their rights – they have to enter a state “illegally”, i.e. without an asylum title, to apply for it within the borders of that state. We will unearth the consequences of this and similar paradoxes for refugee reception, settlement and integration policy in European host countries and discuss how – if at all – they can be resolved.
