Master Thesis
Having come back from an 11-month stint in Athens and the Greek islands working with people seeking asylum, I had a voracious appetite to study and write about what I had witnessed. I entered a Masters’ programme in the School of Law in University of Limerick called ‘Human Rights in Criminal Justice’. As it transpired it was oriented towards the latter, which initially disappointed me, but ultimately would thrust me into the legal realm.
Asylum in Europe: The Location and Dislocation of Solidarity
“The objective of this dissertation is to locate solidarity in the asylum processes operative in the European Union (EU) at present while at the same time trace its dislocation through these same processes. As a guiding principle, solidarity is quintessential to international relations such as the EU itself, and intrinsic to the functional implementation of international human rights law. Solidarity, it may and will be argued, forms the normative touchstone of the EU asylum acquis. However, since what is commonly referred to as the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the very principles and frameworks of the international refugee protection regime have been floundering across the EU. This dissertation analyses the concept of solidarity through its location in interstate, inter-social and interpersonal relationships and its dislocation through its polarities: sovereignty, criminalisation and discrimination.