Asylum Seekers, Refugees, Responses to the Dilemmas of Forced Migration

This course explores the legal and policy issues of forced migration. It is practice oriented, enabling the students to meet leading actors of the refugee scene, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Budapest office staff, the Hungarian Office for Immigration and Nationality and the leading NGO-s (Helsinki Committee, Menedek). Meeting with asylum seekers and refugees is also part of the course.

In academic respects the course will analyse in detail the cornerstone documents of the present refugee regime, including the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees with its 1967 Protocol, and the evolving EU Common European Asylum System as it develops through legislative proposals and adopted documents as part of the area of freedom, security and justice. The increasing body of human rights treaties applied for the protection of asylum seekers as well as selected national legal systems and case law will also be reviewed and discussed.

Knowledge of law in general or international law in particular is not a prerequisite of participation in the course. The necessary concepts will be explained.

The course's final content will depend on the students' interest to the extend that the syllabus offers alternatives and students taking the course will choose. The first nine classes are set (maximum they can be compressed into eight) but the choice remains concerning classes 10 -16. Out of that seven classes students actually taking the course can elect their preferred three, so the total number of classes will be 12.

The reading list is not final, it might change before the hard copy of the reader is submitted.

Grading:

Participation and presentation(s): 35 %

Final exam: 65 %

Office hours: TBA