Gianna
Eckert

Gianna Eckert is a PhD student at the University of Bristol's Law School with research interests across asylum and refugee law, deportation and citizenship studies, comparative migration law, regularisation practices and human rights law. Her PhD project investigates the regulations and policies applicable to migrants whose removal has been de facto or de jure suspended from a socio-legal perspective. Focusing on the UK and Germany, her research explores how both countries manage cases in which removal cannot be enforced out due to persisting legal and practical barriers. The researcher is particularly interested in discerning the migration governance logics embedded in the laws applicable to unreturnable migrants. Based on empirical data, the inquiry will assess the extent to which current approaches attempt to indirectly induce the the return of migrants whose removal remains unenforceable. In doing so, the study hopes to conceptualise the role of ‘indirect removal practices’ across both countries before examining their lawfulness under international human rights law. Her project is supervised by Prof. Diego Acosta Arcarazo and Dr Kathryn Allinson. Previously, Gianna worked as a research assistant on an ESRC-funded project examining SOGI asylum adjudication and the role of support organisations in this context. She was awarded the runner-up prize of the Border Criminologies Master’s dissertation competition for her thesis completed for the MSc in Global Migration at the University College London. Her thesis explored the system of statutory toleration in Germany through a novel analytical lens, combining political philosophy and Foucauldian concepts of biopolitical governmentality.