Disputationer 2023
Alezini Loxa
Sustainability and EU Migration Law: What Place for Migrants' Rights
Datum för disputationen: torsdagen den 5 oktober Fakultetsopponent: Professor Niamh Nic Shuibhne, Edinburgh Law School Ämne: EU-rätt
Abstract
Sustainable migration is the new objective of EU migration law, a term whose meaning and legal implications are unclear. Through a critical historical study of different areas of EU migration law, the dissertation explores whether and how the past can guide the way for a contemporary understanding of sustainable migration. Specifically, the project looks into the historical development of EU migration law from the Treaty of Paris to this day with a focus on free movement of workers, Accession Treaties, Association Agreements and the regulation of migration from third countries. By investigating how the economic and social pillars of sustainability, as historically conveyed in the EU primary law objectives of economic growth and social progress, shaped the rights of migrants, the project identifies the limitations that lie behind the novel objective of sustainable migration. The analysis demonstrates that the balancing of economic and social considerations, currently reflected in the concept of sustainability, has shaped EU migration law as a legal system with very specific characteristics. These are the attribution of rights to migrants due to their contribution to growth, the limitation of their rights due to perceived risks to growth , an emphasis on work-related rights as a means to social progress without a broader conception of the human being behind the economic actor, and the incorporation of clauses to guarantee that there is always a safety valve to stop migration in case of threats to the economy. These characteristics reveal inherent limitations in the way migrants’ rights are construed at EU level, and these in turn frame the limitations of an EU sustainable migration. Comparing the characteristics that flow from the history of EU migration law with the current formation of the EU legal system under the Lisbon Treaty, the project also examines whether and how such limitations could be overcome. The suggestions made on the matter cannot do away with the structural limitations that characterize the EU legal order and, relatedly, EU migration law. Rather, taking a pragmatic approach, the dissertation suggests that sustainable migration is not far from the legal framework currently in place for EU migrants. Pursuing sustainable migration in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice would mean reproducing the structures of economic exclusion that exist in free movement while attributing effective mobility rights to third-country nationals and extending their social rights. Conceptualizing EU sustainable migration in this way would not put an end to the exclusion of vulnerable migrants, which is after all attributed to the inherent limitations of a legal order structured around the objectives of growth and progress. It would, however, offer more extensive protection to third-country nationals who contribute equally to the EU project of growth, thereby guaranteeing more socially sustainable societies.
Läs mer om Alezini Loxas avhandling i universitetets forskningsportal.
Anna Zemskova
The Rule of Law in Economic
Emergency in the European Union
Datum för disputation: onsdagen den 26 april
Fakultetsopponent: professor Takis Tridimas, King´s College, London
Ämne: konstitutionell rätt
Abstract
Both decades of the 21st century have been categorized as testing the EU constitutional foundations in the course of different crises, that have been challenging the viability of the European integration and causing alterations to EU constitutional design. The rhetoric of crisis/emergency in the EU has been consistently deployed in the areas of public security, environmental protection, migration law, Union values, the Economic and Monetary Union, public health and EU external action and acted as a justification for the invocation of non-standard measures. In this respect economic emergency, exemplified by the Great Crisis of 2007–2008 and the Euro Area Crisis, turned out to be a real test for the Union actors in terms of preserving adherence to the EU value, the rule of law, under such extraordinary circumstances.
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the rule of law, Union’s foundational principle, has been affected during economic emergency of the Great Crisis of 2007–2008 and the Euro Area Crisis and its aftermath in several policy areas; what implications it produced for the functioning of the EU constitutional edifice in general, as well as what impact it had on the EU’s response to a new economic emergency, triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Läs om Anna Zemskovas avhandling i universitetets forskningsportal.
Soo Hyun Lee
Right to Regulate for Sustainable Development in International Investment Law
The Challenge of Incomplete Assessments, Promise of Sustainable Investment, and Need for Reserved Optimism
Datum för disputation: fredagen den 4 april
Fakultetsopponent: docent Caroline Henckels, Monash University
Ämne: folkrätt
Abstract
Within international investment law scholarship, increased attention has been devoted to the capacity of international investment law, which includes investment treaty arbitration, to facilitate sustainable development. Scholars increasingly agree that issues of sustainable development permeate throughout the international investment law system and thus cannot be viewed as beyond its scope and jurisdiction. From that juncture, however, there is a wide divergence of opinions concerning the impacts of the investment law regime on sustainable development.
Current investment treaty practice, for instance, has been flagged as limiting the promotion of sustainable investment, with the Global South shouldering a greater burden with the shifting dynamics of global economic integration. Meanwhile, others believe that sustainable development and international investment law do not share a necessarily “inimical” relationship, instead pointing to possibilities of a “closer nexus” that can guide the future practice of international investment law. In this manner, the scholarship can be split into two prevailing views: (1) there remain opportunities to reform international investment law through embracing sustainability and inclusivity (the evolutionary view) and (2) international investment law is inherently an impediment to sustainable development needs (the revolutionary view).
This dissertation rallies to the evolutionary approach by positing that by complementing the existing system of international investment law with the interdisciplinarity that constitutes sustainable development and then imbuing this nexus into the heart of that system, then international investment law can embody a powerful role in advancing sustainable development. To do this, the dissertation begins by identifying a dimension in the intersection between international investment law and sustainable development where enhanced interdisciplinarity can have an empowering effect. Namely, this dimension is a type of safeguard that host states can appeal to either when negotiating the provisions of an international investment agreement or during an investment treaty arbitration called reserving the right to regulate in the public interest, specifically when involving matters of sustainable development. One of the primary shortcomings obstructing a harmonious interplay between international investment law and sustainable development from this particular dimension, however, is that there lacks a means to test whether a public policy measure taken by the host state or an investment by the foreign investor contributes to sustainable development.
Läs om Soo Hyun Lees avhandling i universitetets forskningsportal.
Lisa Kerker
Anhörigmigranters rättsliga skydd i tid och rum - En studie av skydd från våld i förhållande till vistelser
Datum för disputation: fredagen den 17 mars
Fakultetsopponent: professor Anna Lundberg, Lunds universitet
Ämne: offentlig rätt
Abstract
This doctoral dissertation in public law maps and analyses protection from domestic violence for family migrants in relation to family migrants' right of stay in Sweden from 2000-2022.
The thesis covers legal protection from domestic violence in three cases: a denied right of stay before immigration takes place if it can be assumed that the person applying for a residence permit based on family ties will be subjected to domestic violence should a residence permit be granted; a right of stay in case of a relationship ending due to subjection to domestic violence and the residence permit is at risk of being withdrawn whereupon expulsion can follow; and as a right of stay through a prolonged residence permit in case of a relationship ending because the family migrant has been subjected to domestic violence. It analyses how, and to what extent, legal protection from domestic violence against family migrants is created and developed. This is related to the right of stay for family migrants in intimate relationships in Swedish migration law. The thesis pays particular attention to how the content of 'violence' in the legal protection affects its extent, and how time affects prerequisites for a person to take advantage of the protection. It shows the extent of the protection offered in the three cases, highlights gaps in the protection as a whole, and sheds light on how the Swedish state's interest in protecting persons from domestic violence meets and comes into conflict with the state's interest in controlling immigration, as these two interests are expressed in family migration law.
Läs mer om Lisa Kerkers avhandling i universitetets forskningsportal.
