Family Reunification in Europe

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 he is also a 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 doctoral candidate at the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw) at Ghent University. Her research interests concern family reunification, marriage migration and transnational families from a socio-legal perspective. She is currently finalising her doctorate on family reunification of Turkish migrants in Belgium, a study of lived experiences and legal consciousness.

1. Exploring Inequalities in Family Reunification in Europe: Perspectives from Legal and Social Sciences

Part I: Setting the Scene

2. A Right to Family Reunification in Europe: A Guide to the Labyrinth

3. Personal Status Across Borders: Family Reunification Procedures Meet Private International Law

4. Families, Family Norms and Policies: Insights from the Social Sciences

Part II: Unveiling Inequalities

5. Developing a Right to Family Reunification, Immigrant Integration and Equality in Europe

6. How Race and Gender Function in European Family Migration Law

7. Better off Without Parents? Refugee Children and Family Reunification: Norms and Ethical Concerns

Part III: Accessing Family Reunification

8. Moving in Circles: The Beginning and End of Exercising Free Movement Rights

9. Relationship Triangle and the Citizens Directive: Does Subsisting Marriage Exclude the Access to Derived Residence of Durable Partners?

10. The “Humanitarian” Clause of the Dublin III Regulation: Limiting Entrance, Gatekeeping Values

11. Family Reunification Policies in Italy: Ambivalences, Discrimination, Resistance

Part IV: Proving Family Ties

12. Family Reunification for “Paperless” Eritrean Refugees: A Pie in The Sky or a Realisable Right?

13. The Recognition of Child and Polygamous Marriages in Belgium: Alignment Between Private International Law and Migration Law?

14. Your Relationship is Genuine, but Your Marriage is Not. Defining Marriages of Convenience in EU and UK Law

15. Family Reunification and Administrative Citizenship: A Transnational Perspective

Part V: Navigating Regimes

16. Enforced Transnationalism: Refugees’ Family Lives in Germany Under Conditions of Separation and Waiting

17. Reassembling the Right to Family Reunification for Refugees in Belgium through Social Work Practices of Welfare Bricolage

18. A Multi-Perspectivist Analysis of a Lived Family Reunification Experience: At the Junction of Co-Creative Research and Autoethnography

19. Domestic Violence Within the Securitisation of (Family and Love) Migration: The Case of Belgium