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The Right to Asylum: Legal Frameworks, Challenges and Encroachments

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  6. The Right to Asylum: Legal Frameworks, Challenges and Encroachments

Center for Migration and Refugee Studies

About the Course

In this course, we will focus on the right to asylum, examining not only its legal foundations and the international frameworks supporting it, but also the ethical and other factors that shape the making of refugee and migration policy more broadly, from history and culture to political and economic factors. We will next turn to the encroachments on this right, exploring national and regional policies concentrating on issues such as border control, securitization and externalization, rising nationalism and the construction of “migration crises.” The course will examine the issue globally, with a particular focus on the current political discourse and anti-migration policies in the United States and the European Union, and the impact of these policies on the right to seek asylum in the Global South, especially in the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region. The course will be structured around discussions of academic literature, journalistic accounts, short films and case studies.

 

Duration 

June 15 - 19, 2025

 

About the Instructor

Parastou Hassouri is an independent researcher and consultant focusing on refugee and migration law and policy. She has previously taught courses in international refugee law and on Palestinian refugees and international law at The American University in Cairo and has extensive experience in the field of international refugee law and immigrant rights and migration policy. Parastou has served as a consultant with different UNHCR operations and with NGOs, focusing on both research and advocacy. She previously worked as a legal advisor and sexual and gender-based violence focal point at the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA) in Cairo. Her experience in the United States includes serving as an attorney advisor at the Immigration Courts of New York City and Los Angeles. In addition, she directed the Immigrant Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, where she focused on responding to ethnic profiling and other forms of anti-immigrant backlash in the United States in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Parastou also occasionally writes on the topic of refugees and migration policy.