The Legal Production of Migrant Precarity: Insights from Canada and Norway

The seminar will look at how law shapes the inclusion and exclusion of refugees and other migrants in Canada and in Norway. It will be based on presentations by Associate Professor Delphine Nakache from the University of Ottawa and Post-doc Jessica Schultz, who have worked together on the Horizon 2020 project VULNER (Vulnerability in the Global Protection Regime: How Does the Law Assess, Address, Shape and Produce the Vulnerabilities of the Protection Seekers?).

Fredrikke Moldenæs, PhD candidate from the University of Tromsø, will join us to reflect on how vulnerability theory may or may not be useful in conceptualizing migrant precarity.

Delphine Nakache is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. She teaches courses in the areas of public international law and immigration and refugee law. She has researched and published on issues related to the human rights and security-based implications of migration, citizenship and refugee laws and policies, both in Europe and Canada. Her main focus is on issues surrounding the protection of migrant workers, asylum seekers and non-status migrants, and on barriers to citizenship for disadvantaged immigrants. In addition to leading the Canadian work package for VULNER, she heads a five-year SSHRC-funded research on pathways into and out of precarity for temporary migrants in Canada.