Family Reunification in Europe

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 he is also a 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 Gueduek is a doctoral candidate at the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw) at Ghent University. Her research interests concern family reunification, marriage migration and transnational families from a socio-legal perspective. She is currently finalising her doctorate on family reunification of Turkish migrants in Belgium, a study of lived experiences and legal consciousness.