Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI)

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Faculty of Law | Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI) | Research Areas | Law and Jurisprudence | Migration and the transformation of German administrative law: an ethnographic study of state-migrant interactions in administrative courts

Migration and the transformation of German administrative law: an ethnographic study of state-migrant interactions in administrative courts

 

Dr. Larissa Vetters
Lisa Hahn
Judith Eggers
 

At the heart of this research project, which is funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, lies the issue of what migration as a phenomenon of globalization “does” to German administrative law. Two questions are of central concern:


1) How do migrants as individual social actors use and mobilize legal protections offered by administrative law when they are affected by its regulations? And how do those who apply these regulations in administrative bodies and courts face the challenges of having to take migrants into account and integrating them as legal subjects?


2) What are the consequences of these social practices (i.e., interactions and negotiations that take place during the process of dispute resolution) for German administrative law and for the participating actors’ conceptions of the state under the rule of law? Are German administrative law and its basic ordering principle, the rule of law (Rechtsstaatlichkeit), transformed in the process and, if so, how?


The theoretical starting point of this project is the relationship between the state, on the one hand, and the migrant as a legal subject affected by administrative regulations, on the other. As an empirical starting point, we follow cases in which migrants appeal to specialized administrative courts in the city of Berlin to challenge administrative decisions that negatively affect their lives.
An interdisciplinary team of three researchers with qualifications in sociocultural anthropology and legal studies is carrying out fieldwork to answer these questions. The project is a collaborative venture of the LSI Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle.