Human mobility has always been a key precondition for development, cultural exchange and, ultimately, survival. Yet today few other issues remain subject to such elaborate restrictions. From immigration rules to aviation standards, laws determine both who has access to mobility and the regular/irregular routes through which people move. For better or worse, laws related to mobility define livelihood opportunities, social structures, and economic development (Bauman 1998; Munshi 2020).
Despite the centrality of law for this area, no common framework for studying human mobility exists within the legal discipline (Aleinikoff 2017; Megret 2017). Laws related to mobility are found across highly diverse national and international legal regimes, e.g. security, trade, public health, refugees, and human rights. This not only creates recurrent conflicts and policy dilemmas; academic specialisation means that we know surprisingly little about how these different types of law interact (Gammeltoft-Hansen and Madsen 2021), how legal outcomes are produced and develop over time (Gammeltoft-Hansen 2021), and the intended and unintended effects of their enforcement (Mann 2013).
In this talk, Gammeltoft-Hansen outlines some core tenets for a more systematic research agenda on global mobility law; its possible theoretical foundations, and its necessary divestment from existing and dominant Global North perspectives.
About the speaker
Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen is professor of law at the University of Copenhagen and the director of MOBILE, the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law. Established in 2023, MOBILE’s mission is to systematically study the legal infrastructures of human mobility across geographies, social divides, travel patterns and time.
Registration
The event is open to everyone, but due to limitations on the size of the room, we ask everyone to register in advance.
Light refreshments will be served, and feel free to bring your own lunch!