Family Reunification in Europe: Exposing Inequalities

This book provides a multi-disciplinary investigation of family reunification laws, policies and practices across the European Union.

Family reunification - the possibility for family members to (re)unite in a country where one of them is residing - has been high on the political agenda. Building on original empirical research with families and practitioners as well as in-depth doctrinal analyses, the book explores the fragmentation of legal rules, the gaps between formal regulations and practices, and their consequences for families across borders. Different contributions in the volume point to the growing inequalities among and within applicant families, based on residence status, gender, location, citizenship and socio-economic resources, due to the family reunification regimes currently in place.The book enhances interdisciplinary dialogue by providing clear insights into the specific contribution of migration law, private international law and social scientific analyses to the study of family reunification.

The book is aimed at researchers working on the topic of family reunification, as well as students of law and socio-legal studies and practitioners in the field of migration.

Ellen Desmet is associate professor of migration law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University, where she founded the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw). Her research is situated at the intersection of migration law, human rights and legal anthropology, with a focus on asylum and family reunification. She serves as co-chair of the Human Rights Research Network, chair of the Belgian Refugee Council - NANSEN, and board member of the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR).

Milena Belloni is assistant professor in Migration and Global Mobility in the Department of Sociology at the University of Antwerp. Her research concerns migration dynamics in contexts of crisis, protracted displacement in Europe and in the Global South, refugee families and ethnographic methods. Her monographic study on the migration of Eritreans to Europe, The Big Gamble, is published (open access) by the University of California Press (2019).

Dirk Vanheule is full professor of law with the Government and Law Research Group at the University of Antwerp, where her is also member of the MIGLOBA network on migration studies. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law and migration and asylum law. He is also advocate, called to the Ghent Bar, working in the field of administrative and constitutional litigation. He is editor of Tijdschrift voor Vreemdelingenrecht (Belgian Journal for Migration Law).

Jinske Verhellen is professor of private international law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. Her research focuses on international family law and its interaction with migration law. She is a member of the Ghent University Interfaculty Research Group CESSMIR (Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees), the Ghent University Human Rights Research Network and the coordination team/editorial board of the CUREDI project (Cultural and Religious Diversity under State Law across Europe), coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Ayse Güdük is a PhD candidate at Ghent University. Her research interests concern family reunification, marriage migration and transnational families from a socio-legal perspective. In September 2018, she started working for the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw) at Ghent University. She is currently in her final stages of her PhD on family reunification of Turkish migrants in Belgium, a study of lived experiences and legal consciousness.