The Practice of Immigration and Nationality Law:Setting Boundaries of Specialization at the Margins

Drawing on literature on professions and specialization, both within the legal profession and outside of it &ndash; in disciplines such as medicine, teaching, and scientific research &ndash; this paper looks at immigration and nationality law practice as a specialist area established through boundary setting in England. It analyses the boundaries placed on knowledge and authorised practice of law by examining how these lead to new specializations. Situated at the margins of legal practice, immigration law represents a low status area of practice which is not just influenced by market forces. Driven by external factors and internal motivations, the process of specialization operates to create niche areas of knowledge and expertise within immigration law. We find that the process of specialization can have contradictory effects: both consolidating professional values as well as leading potentially to de-professionalization.<br /><br />Aprovechando la literatura existente sobre profesiones y especializaci&oacute;n tanto en la profesi&oacute;n jur&iacute;dica como fuera de ella, este art&iacute;culo aborda la pr&aacute;ctica jur&iacute;dica sobre inmigraci&oacute;n y nacionalidad como un &aacute;rea de especializaci&oacute;n que se ha establecido sobre la fijaci&oacute;n de fronteras en Inglaterra. Analiza los l&iacute;mites fijados al conocimiento y la pr&aacute;ctica jur&iacute;dica autorizada a trav&eacute;s de un an&aacute;lisis de c&oacute;mo esas fronteras provocaron el surgimiento de especializaciones nuevas. En el margen de la pr&aacute;ctica jur&iacute;dica, el derecho migratorio representa un &aacute;rea de bajo nivel en la pr&aacute;ctica, &aacute;rea que no se ve influida por las fuerzas del mercado. El proceso de especializaci&oacute;n est&aacute; dirigido por factores externos y motivaciones internas, y opera para crear nichos de conocimiento y especializaci&oacute;n dentro del derecho migratorio. Hemos descubierto que el proceso de especializaci&oacute;n puede tener efectos contradictorios, puesto que puede consolidar valores profesionales a la vez que, potencialmente, conducir a la desprofesionalizaci&oacute;n.<br /><br /><strong>DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN:</strong> <a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=3057483" target="_blank">http://ssrn.com/abstract=3057483</a

Bettering the Best Interests of the Child Determination:Of Checklists and Balancing Exercises

The paper compares European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and uk court judgments on cross-border nationality cases concerning children and wholly domestic family law cases regarding children (without the cross-border element). It identifies different legal standards that apply to the well-being of children such as the best interests principle and the welfare principle and maps how successful these standards are in bringing in the views of children. It appears that cross-border nationality cases are unable to consider the interests of children as seriously as the wholly domestic family law cases. The domestic court approach of welfare brings in children’s views more effectively than nationality cases in domestic courts or at the ECtHR. It would benefit children if a rigorous best interests determination is carried out in nationality proceedings and a welfare approach is adopted consistent with family law cases.</jats:p

El empleo de comisiones compuestas por varios miembros para abordar las complejidades de la DCR

Los estudios realizados en diversas jurisdicciones europeas sugieren que el empleo de comisiones judiciales compuestas por varios miembros en la fase de apelación mejora la calidad y la equidad de la DCR

Rethinking commonality in refugee status determination in Europe: Legal geographies of asylum appeals

The Common European Asylum System aims to establish common standards for refugee status determination among EU Member States. Combining insights from legal and political geography we bring the depth and scale of this challenge into sharp relief. Drawing on interviews and a detailed ethnography of asylum adjudication involving over 850 in-person asylum appeal observations, we point towards practical differences in the spatio-temporality, materiality and logistics of asylum appeal processes as they are operationalised in seven European countries. Our analysis achieves three things. Firstly, we identify a key zone of differences at the level of concrete, everyday implementation that has largely escaped academic attention, which allows us to critically assess the notion of harmonisation of asylum policies in new ways. Secondly, drawing on legal- and political-geographical concepts, we offer a way to conceptualise this zone by paying attention to the spatio-temporality, materiality and logistics it involves. Thirdly, we offer critical legal logistics as a new direction for scholarship in legal geography and beyond that promises to prise open the previously obscured mechanics of contemporary legal systems

What’s missing from legal geography and materialist studies of law? Absence and the assembling of asylum appeal hearings in Europe

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordData availability statement: Due to the ethical and legally sensitive nature of the research, ethnographic notes taken in court could not be made openly available. Appellant interviewees were not asked for their permission to share their interview transcripts in an online open archive because of concerns that they could misunderstand what was being asked for, or feel obliged to agree but subsequently feel less able to conduct free conversation in research interviews as a result, thereby negatively impacting on the quality of the data generated. Additional details relating to, and data resulting from, to a survey taken during observations of British asylum appeals between 2013 and 2016 are available from the UK Data Archive (persistent identifier: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852032).There is an absence of absence in legal geography and materialist studies of the law. Drawing on a multi‐sited ethnography of European asylum appeal hearings, this paper illustrates the importance of absences for a fully‐fledged materiality of legal events. We show how absent materials impact hearings, that non‐attending participants profoundly influence them, and that even when participants are physically present, they are often simultaneously absent in other, psychological registers. In so doing we demonstrate the importance and productivity of thinking not only about law's omnipresence but also the absences that shape the way law is experienced and practiced. We show that attending to the distribution of absence and presence at legal hearings is a way to critically engage with legal performance.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)European Research Council (ERC

Using multi-member panels to tackle RSD complexities

تشير البحوث في طائفةٍ من الاختصاصات القضائية الأوربية إلى أنّ استعمال الهيئات القضائية المتعددة الأعضاء في مرحلة الاستئناف يحسِّن جودةَ تقرير صفة اللاجئ وإنصافَه

Using multi-member panels to tackle RSD complexities

Los estudios realizados en diversas jurisdicciones europeas sugieren que el empleo de comisiones judiciales compuestas por varios miembros en la fase de apelación mejora la calidad y la equidad de la DCR.Research across a range of European jurisdictions suggests that the use of multi-member judicial panels at appeal stage improves the quality and fairness of RS