Céline Bauloz

Seeking Asylum in the European Union

Seeking Asylum in the European Union provides critical analyses of selected problems that scholars and policy-makers will have to address in the ‘second phase’ of the Common European Asylum System: the comprehensive recast of European asylum legislation completed in 2013. With a foreword by Professor Helene Lambert.

Foreigners: Wanted Dead or Alive?: Medical Cases before European Courts and the Need for an Integrated Approach to Non-Refoulement

While non-refoulement is an absolute principle of international human rights law, its application to seriously ill individuals exposed to premature death and physical and mental suffering because of the substandard medical system in their country of origin seems to have followed a double standard in Europe. On the one hand, medical cases are increasingly treated at the margin of the non-refoulement principle by the European Court of Human Rights, being only covered in highly exceptional cases. On the other hand, seriously ill individuals have been excluded from the scope of subsidiary protection in the European Union as confirmed by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Against such restrictive interpretations, the present article calls for an integrated approach where all non-refoulement claims, including those on medical grounds, are to be assessed along the same criteria so as to ensure seriously ill individuals a genuine right to live in dignity.

Introducing the Second Phase of the Common European Asylum System

If the roads to reach the European Union (EU) are often dangerous for asylum-seekers, they only constitute preliminary steps on the tortuous journey of seeking protection within the Union. Being granted asylum in EU Member States is indeed a sinuous process, reflecting the complexity of the communitarian protection regime established at the EU level, the so-called ‘Common European Asylum System’ (CEAS). The complexity surrounding the CEAS is in turn inherent to its very rationale, scope and evolution.

Refugee Status and Subsidiary Protection: Towards a Uniform Content of International Protection?

Within the European Union (EU), subsidiary protection has been established a form of protection complementary to the refugee status. This hierarchy of international protection forms is clearly set out in the 2004 EU Qualification Directive and its 2011 Recast. The question nonetheless remains: to which extent subsidiary is and should be considered subsidiary to the refugee status? The present chapter approaches this question by examining the content of the two forms of protection, that is, the rights and benefits granted to refugees and subsidiary protection beneficiaries. Analysing the substantial modifications brought by the 2011 Recast Qualification Directive, it questions the rationale and relevance of the remaining differences in treatment between the two beneficiaries of international protection.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law, Theory and Policy edited by Satvinder S Juss

Migration is inherent to mankind. Human beings have always been on the move, be it for survival purposes or simply in search of a better life. Although we have adopted a more sedentary lifestyle over the years, migration is still deeply anchored in our inner identity. It can nowadays take multiple forms, from labour migration and flight from persecution to student exchange programmes. The breadth of the migratory phenomenon is virtually as limitless as the needs and curiosity of humanity. Our intrinsic tendency to migrate is, however, confronted with the boundaries that we ourselves have erected—those of nation states. Our need to belong to a defined society has somehow taken precedence over our openness to the outside world. As a result, migration has become regulated under the banner of national sovereignty. The non-citizen has become ‘the other’, the one further stigmatised and excluded in times of national hardship such as economic crises. These two contradictory forces have made migration as much debated as it is inevitable. It is in recognition of this reality that The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law Theory and Policy inscribes itself. As presented by its editor, Satvinder S Juss, the book enquires into ‘how different groups and individuals have undergone the experience of migration[,] how that experience has led them to an encounter with the law’ and ‘[h]ow well that encounter protects the human rights of the individual, while seeking to safeguard the vital interests of the state itself ’ (xv). To answer such ambitious questions, the perspective taken is resolutely legal, while acknowledging the policy and philosophical aspects that migration necessarily entails in theory and practice. Against the magnitude of migration, the Ashgate Research Companion legitimately focuses on two of its forms, which have raised considerable comment and debate over recent decades: forced and labour migration. Asylum seekers and migrant workers indeed find themselves at the delicate intersection of law and policy. While states are bound to protect refugees by virtue of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, their international protection is hindered by a myriad of obstacles placed on their paths by these very states, such as preand post-entry access requirements. Migrant workers are not better off for, despite today’s globalisation, their fate remains predominantly in the hands of states. States’ reluctance to protect migrant workers is further epitomised by the relatively low number of state parties to the United