Galya Ruffer

Pushed Beyond Recognition? The Liberality of Family Reunification Policies in the EU

Whereas family reunification has been considered an essential element of integration for European labour migration since the late 1950s, it is now under attack as fraught with abuse and undermining national solidarity and social cohesion. Given the continued presence of and need for labour migrants, national reforms have sought to introduce employment, skills-based immigration and terms of integration that, on the face of it, emphasise liberal values and civic participation. At the European level, there has been a push to create a unified approach to the treatment and rights of third-country nationals that both offers protection and preserves the sovereignty of member-states to define the terms of national belonging. Through a discussion of the EU Family Reunification Directive, I examine the liberality of recent restrictions to family reunification that set conditions for integration, and argue that family restrictions based on a concern for cultural integration push the limits of the liberal-rights framework in that they reduce the freedom and equality of the individual and undermine the spirit of family unity that has been the cornerstone of liberal immigration policy.

Agency on a global scale: Rules, rights, and the European Union

Part 1: Framework 1. Globalization and the Citizenship Gap Alison Brysk and Gershon Shafir 2. Citizenship and Human Rights In An Era of Globalization Gershon Shafir Part 2: Producing Citizenship 3. Constituting Political Community Ronnie Lipschutz 4. Latitudes of Citizenship Aihwa Ong Part 3: Constructing Rights 5. Agency on a Global Scale: Rules, rights and the European Union David Jacobson and Galya Benarieh Ruffer 6. International Law and Citizenship: Mandated membership, diluted identity Peter Spiro Part 4: Globalizing the Citizenship Gap 7. Deflated Citizenship: Labor rights in a global era Gay W. Seidman 8. The Globalization of Social Reproduction: Women migrants Kristen Hill Maher 9. Children Across Borders: Patrimony, property or persons? Alison Brysk Part 5: Reconstructing Citizenship 10. Citizenship and Globalism: Markets, empire and terrorism Richard Falk 11. The Repositioning of Citizenship Saskia Sassen 12. Globalizing Citizenship? Alison Brysk and Gershon Shafir

The Cosmopolitics of Asylum-Seekers in the European Union*

The UNHCR asylum regime, implemented in the 1950s in response to the displacement of people in Europe, must now respond to asylum as a global and ongoing phenomenon. A new paradigm is emerging within the European Union that seeks to define the right of asylum within broader economic and security objectives. Within this paradigm, EU asylum policies contain their own contradiction, seeking both to expand the forms of persecution to account for changing global contexts and limit those deserving asylum by defining groups of clear cases of persecution, in effect removing discretion on an individual basis. In the balance, asylum-seekers are increasingly viewed as criminal, to be kept off of the territory and outside of the “public space.” Through an analysis of the legal and judicial developments of asylum in the EU and the UK, as a member state, this study seeks to understand the right to asylum as embedded within a cosmopolitics of layered legal authority that supports the broader neo-liberal economic order.