Current Project
The Secondary Forced Displacement of Palestinian Refugees - A Case Apart?
In recent years, a significant number of refugees have been re-displaced from or within their country of refuge. Most recently, Iraqi and Palestinian refugees have been affected by the conflict in Syria. With displacement being defined in relation to the country of origin, secondary forced displacements are not explicitly accounted for under international law. Thus, multi-layered displacements such as those occurring in Syria leave non-citizens, i.e. refugees, facing a protection gap. This gap becomes particularly apparent in cases of protracted displacement and statelessness. The objective of my doctoral research is to scrutinise the status of refugees under international law in cases of secondary forced displacement. Looking at the manifestations of law on space and vice versa, it asks if the conceptualisation of secondary forced displacement as "overlapping refugeedoms" offers a tool to more comprehensively scrutinise the normative protection of secondary displaced refugees under international law? At the core of this study, I critically engage with concepts such as refugee, citizenship, nationality and identity.
Supervisor Prof. Heintze
