As the PI of the ASYFAIR Research Project, Prof. Nick Gill will give a keynote on the main findings of the ASYFAIR project.
You can watch the video of the keynote further below.
Keynote, Wednesday, 30 June 2021, 15:15 (BST)
Inside Europe’s Asylum Appeals
Ethnographic Perspectives on the Struggle for Access, Engagement and Fairness
Thousands of people seeking refugee protection appeal their asylum decisions in Europe every year, but what does an asylum appeal actually involve, how are they experienced, and how do they vary across Europe? Drawing on extensive ethnographic work in seven European countries, this talk examines the social and institutional dynamics involved in asylum appeal processes on the ground. It raises concerns about the practical accessibility of refugee protection via asylum appeals, the superficiality of the process, and the degree of subjectivity involved. At the same time it also reports on a range of practices that seemed to work, or that could work, to improve access, engagement and fairness throughout the process. In doing so the talk opens a series of questions about asylum appeals in Europe, including in relation to how different they are, how public they should be and what relationship they should share with the initial, governmental part of refugee status determination.
Prof. Nick Gill
Human Geography, PI ASYFAIR
Nick Gill is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. He is a political geographer whose work focuses on issues of justice and injustice, especially in the context of migration, border control, mobility and its confiscation. His work is highly inter-disciplinary and he has published academic work in anthropology, economics, law, sociology and migration studies journals, as well as in his ‘home’ geographical ones. He uses multiple methodologies and employs interviews, ethnography, focus groups and quantitative analysis in his work. His current research project, ASYFAIR, examines access to justice in asylum determination systems in Europe.
Selected publications:
(for a full list of Nick’s publications, see here, or see the ASYFAIR publication page here)
Gill N, Allsopp J, Burridge A, Fisher D, Griffiths M, Hambly J, Hynes J, Paszkiewicz N, Rotter R, Schmid-Scott A (2020) Experiencing Asylum Appeals: 34 Ways to Improve Access to Justice at the First-tier Tribunal. Exeter University and the Public Law Project [open access].
Gill N, Good A (eds) (2018) Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan [open access].
Gill N, Conlon D, Moran D, Burridge A (2018) Carceral Circuitry: New Directions in Carceral Geography. Progress in Human Geography, 42, 183-204 [open access].
Gill N, Rotter R, Burridge A, Allsopp J (2017) The limits of procedural discretion: Unequal treatment and vulnerability in Britain’s asylum appeals. Social and Legal Studies, 27(1), 49-78 [open access].
Burridge A and Gill N (2016) Conveyor‐Belt Justice: Precarity, Access to Justice, and Uneven Geographies of Legal Aid in UK Asylum Appeals. Antipode, 49, 23-42 [open access].
ASYFAIR 