Vulnerabilities under the Global Protection Regime: how does the law assess, address, shape, and produce the vulnerabilities of protection seekers?

Project Information

VULNER

Grant agreement ID: 870845

DOI

10.3030/870845

Project closed

EC signature date 13 November 2019

Start date 1 February 2020

End date 30 June 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 3 194 775,00

EU contribution

€ 3 030 932,50

Coordinated by

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - VULNER (Vulnerabilities under the Global Protection Regime: how does the law assess, address, shape, and produce the vulnerabilities of protection seekers?)

Reporting period: 2021-02-01 to 2023-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The VULNER project started from the observation that ‘vulnerability’ is increasingly becoming a key concept at the EU and global levels, when developing and implementing laws and policies towards migrants seeking protection, such as refugees and asylum seekers – and this numerous contexts, which range from organizing asylum processes in Western countries and evaluating asylum claims, to selecting refugees for resettlement, and to developing and implementing aid programmes for refugees in first countries of asylum that are also developing countries.

Yet, ‘vulnerability’ is understood differently depending on the actors and the context in which it is applied. This can be problematic, as every migrant seeking protection is vulnerable to some extent. The focus on the specific needs of some vulnerable migrants thus results from a policy choice to value some vulnerabilities over others. If not based on scientific data that give non-stereotyped understanding and conceptualisation of the vulnerabilities that are actually lived and experienced by the migrants seeking protection, such policy choices run the risk of failing to address, exacerbating or even producing further vulnerabilities.

The overall objective of the VULNER project was to improve the knowledge on migrants' vulnerabilities, through a comprehensive study of how migrants seeking protection experience their ‘vulnerabilities’, and how these experiences are continuously shaped and produced in interactions with the legal and policy frameworks and implementation practices of the relevant decision-makers. It was to produce the scientific data, knowledge, and conceptualizations needed to prevent stereotyped understandings of the vulnerabilities of migrants seeking protection - and to develop a critical reflection on the promises, challenges, and pitfalls of mobilizing vulnerability as a conceptual tool for asylum and migration governance.

Therefore, the VULNER project documented, evaluated and reflected on 1. how the ‘vulnerabilities’ of the migrants seeking protection are assessed and addressed in the protection regimes of select countries in Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy and Norway), the Middle East (Lebanon) and Africa (Uganda) and 2. how and to what extent this in turn shapes or even produces the ‘vulnerabilities’ as experienced by the migrants seeking protection through a process of constant interactions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The VULNER project started on February 2020, and it ended on June 2023. The work was divided into two main research phases.

A first research phase consisted in a legal (doctrinal) and socio-legal enquiry into institutional approaches to migrants’ vulnerabilities. We sought to document and analyse the various legal and bureaucratic norms and processes aimed at assessing and addressing migrants’ vulnerabilities in each context: what are the legal instruments that require state actors to address migrants’ vulnerabilities? Do they define the vulnerabilities that should be tackled and, if yes, how? Which processes do they establish in view of identifying and addressing migrants’ vulnerabilities? How do state actors incorporate specific attention for migrants’ vulnerabilities in their legal reasoning and practices, when implementing legal standards in individual cases? We conducted an extensive analysis of legal and policy documents, as well as case-law, in each of the countries under study and at the EU level (including the ECtHR case-law). We also conducted over 200 in-depth interviews with decision-makers (such as social and aid workers, public servants within asylum authorities, asylum judges, etc) and other relevant stakeholders (such as NGO case-workers).

A second research phase consisted in conducting ethnographic fieldwork among migrants seeking protection, as well as interviewing them and other relevant stakeholders (such as social workers and lawyers) in view of analyzing and documenting their experiences of vulnerabilities: which main life challenges do migrants face? Do they mobilise existing legal and bureaucratic categories of vulnerability when exercising their agency in view of overcoming or coping with their life challenges, and how? We thereby mobilized 'vulnerability' as an analytical tool to reach a better understanding of migrants' experiences, with a focus on the situated dimensions of migrants' vulnerabilities. We adopted a field-level approach to migrants' vulnerabilities: our enquiry wasn't limited to some determinants of migrants' vulnerability (such as age, health, the legal status, etc.), but we rather sought to understand migrants' experiences based on what they identify as their main life challenges. Over 600 in-depth interviews were conducted.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Findings from the VULNER project inform on how best to develop and implement asylum and migrations policies towards migrants seeking protection, while addressing their vulnerabilities and refraining from fostering them.

From an operational perspective, findings from the VULNER project show a need to develop vulnerability assessments that adequately reflect and consider migrants’ experiences in their situated and ever-evolving dimensions. They warn against developing sanitised vulnerability assessments, which rest on standardised checking-lists that focus on some (relatively) easily identifiable personal characteristics (such as age, gender, disability, etc), and which are performed at a unique point in time. They highlight the main components of migrants’ experiences of their vulnerabilities that should be considered, including how such experiences result from the intersection of personal characteristics, past experiences, social networks, and broader structural factors (such as the prolonged uncertainties resulting from precarious legal statuses).

These findings inform, in turn, the policy-making level by showing the promises, challenges, and pitfalls of mobilising ‘vulnerability’ as a tool for asylum and migration governance. Attention was brought to the transformations that ‘vulnerability’ necessarily undergoes when it is used by institutional actors to identify the migrants who will benefit from a more favored treatment – as 'vulnerability' then turns into a legal and bureaucratic label supporting a selection process with implied exclusionary effects. It was warned against emotional uses of ‘vulnerability’, that rest on each decision-maker’s own stereotyped understanding of migrants’ experiences and perception of deservingness, ignore migrants’ coping and resistance strategies, and ultimately fail to recognise migrants as rights holders. It was also warned against uses of ‘vulnerability’ to legitimise policy solutions that fail to integrate transversal and consistent attention for migrants’ rights, and that limit them to peripheral considerations – to be addressed at operational level through individual and case-by-case measures for the most vulnerable among them.

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