At a time when issues concerning migration and the formation of diasporic communities have come to be critical for all European legal systems, this volume reflects, discusses and analyzes the questions raised by diasporas who have established themselves in Europe over more than fifty years of immigration and the challenges faced by legal systems in the light of continued migration. Contributors from a broad range of backgrounds address prominent issues ranging from legal pluralism among minorities, pressures on EU accession states, irregular migration, state control of family reunification and formation in light of human rights laws, challenges for citizenship and nationality laws and the implementation of visa rules and juxtaposed control zones. Besides the EU as a supranational legal order, the book contains discussion of conditions in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Greece, Turkey and Lithuania. This volume accompanies The Challenge of Asylum to Legal Systems and is the second book to emerge from the W.G Hart Legal Workshop held in 2004 at London's Institute for Advanced Legal Studies.

A collection of papers presenting critical perspectives in the development of asylum law with a focus on European and UK developments, incorporating international human rights law and comparative law perspectives. Issues covered range from law-making at the EU level, with a particular focus on extra-territorial processing of refugees claims, asylum procedures, family members of those in need of protection, welfare benefits and impact of national level on the reception of EU norms. Domestic and comparative perspectives offered include discussions on detention, judicial decision-making, appeal rights, claims processing with particular reference to the role of interpreters and developments in Australia which have provided a model of thought worthy of emulation in the UK.

This contributed volume analyzes in depth how a border area is constantly reshaped as migration policies harden, and what kind of social, political and economic impacts are produced at local and international level. The study is focused on Ventimiglia, an Italian town located 6 km away from the French-Italian border on the gulf of Genoa with a long story of commerce, custom and smuggling activities related to its proximity to the frontier. While several projects have analyzed other symbolic places of the EU migration crisis such as Lampedusa, Calais and Lesvos, there is a severe empirical gap regarding Ventimiglia, a border town at the very geographic core of the Schengen area. This case study may provide emblematic insights into what European migratory movements are currently revealing in terms of the lack of shared responsibility between EU Member States, the EU common asylum system and respect for human rights, with increasing claims for national sovereignty by some Member States.

This book examines how contemporary migrants form and transform their involvement with the law in their host countries and which factors influence this relationship. It suggests a more comprehensive insight into the socio-legal integration of migrants by analysing the interplay between the new legal environment and migrants' existing culturally-derived values, attitudes, behaviour and social expectations towards law and law enforcement. Acknowledging the superdiversity of migration as a global issue, the book uses the case study of Polish post-2004 EU Enlargement migrants to examine values and attitudes to the rules that govern their work and residence in the UK and to the legal system in general. With wider international relevance than just Poland and the UK, this book makes a case for the meaningful employment of legal culture in socio-legal integration research and suggests far-reaching consequences for host countries and their immigrant communities.

Legal Practice and Cultural Diversity considers how contemporary cultural and religious diversity challenges legal practice, how legal practice responds to that challenge, and how practice is changing in the encounter with the cultural diversity occasioned by large-scale, post-war immigration. Locating actual practices and interpretations which occur in jurisprudence and in public discussion, this volume examines how the wider environment shapes legal processes and is in turn shaped by them. In so doing, the work foregrounds a number of themes principally relating to changing norms and practices and sensitivity to cultural and religious difference in the application of the law. Comparative in approach, this study places particular cases in their widest context, taking into account international and transnational influences on the way in which actors, legal and other, respond.

This volume examines the law and system of control which govern immigration and asylum in the UK. It begins with the historical and legal context, explains who is subject to immigration control, and describes the legal and administrative structure of the system.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law, Theory and Policy complements the already successful Ashgate series Law & Migration, established in 2006 which now has a number of well-regarded monographs to its credit. The purpose of this Companion is to augment that Series, by taking stock of the current state of literature on migration law, theory and policy, and to sketch out the contours of its future long-term development, in what is now a vastly expanded research agenda. The Companion provides readers with a definitive and dependable state-of-art review of current research in each of the chosen areas that is all-embracing and all-inclusive of its subject-matter. The chapters focus on the regional and the sub-regional, as well as the national and the global. In so doing, they aim to give a snap-shot that is contextual, coherent, and comprehensive. The contributors are both world-renowned scholars and newer voices and include scholars, practitioners, former judges and researchers and policy-makers who are currently working for international organisations.