Dr Zvezda Vankova is researcher at the Law Faculty of Lund University and the principal investigator of the project ‘Refugee protection or cherry picking? Assessing new admission policies for refugees in Europe’ (2023-2026) funded by the Swedish Research Council. She holds a PhD in Law from Maastricht University. The overall focus of her research aims to examine the interface of legal infrastructures pertaining to human mobility and how their enforcement influences the rights and trajectories of people on the move. More specifically, her research interests lie at the intersection of EU law, Public International Law and empirical legal studies with a focus on human rights, migration, integration and complementary pathways for refugees. She is the author of the Open Access book Circular Migration and the Rights of Migrant Workers in Central and Eastern Europe (2020), which has attracted great scholarly attention resulting in over 9000 accesses since its publication.
She is the co-founder and Steering Committee Member of the Øresund Migration Law Initiative (OMiLI) which brings together scholars of migration law and migration studies from the region to identify research synergies and share research findings. Dr Vankova is also one of the co-conveners of the working group ‘Active Refugee Admission Policies (ARAP)’ within the German Network of Forced Migration Studies (Netzwerk Fluchtforschung, NWFF) and member of the research network International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe (IMISCOE) - Europe's largest interdisciplinary research network in the field of migration, integration and diversity studies.
Dr Zvezda Vankova teaches and supervises MA students in the field of migration law, EU law and human rights law. She currently co-supervises two PhD candidates: Ehab Alhousari at Lund University and Ruben Tans at Maastricht University.
Prior to joining academia, Dr Vankova worked at the Migration Policy Group in Brussels and Open Society Institute in Sofia. She has acted as a consultant on migrant and refugee rights matters to the European Parliament, the Council of Europe’s Special Representative of the Secretary General on Migration and Refugees, and the UNHCR. Dr Zvezda Vankova is also one of the co-founders of the association Multi Kulti Collective, which aims to support the integration of foreigners into Bulgarian society.
| Migration Reasearch Hub ID: 1997 | |
| ORCID | https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0252-9517 |
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/zvezda-vankova-a0b1766/ | |
| X/Twitter | https://twitter.com/zvezda_vankova |
Expertise
Migration processes
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Migration drivers
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Migration forms
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Migration infrastructures
Migration consequences (for migrants, sending and receiving countries)
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Socio-cultural consequences
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Socio-economic consequences
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Transversal consequences
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Legal-political consequences
Migration governance
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Governance actors
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Immigrant policy and law
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Migration policy and law
- Immigration admission and control (general)
- Family reunification policies
- Policies on high-skilled migration
- Policies on low and semi-skilled labour migration
- Policies on short term (i.e. circular, seasonal) migration
- Border control
- Policies on mobility
- Asylum regimes
- Protection regimes for non-recognised refugees
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Governance processes
Cross-cutting topics in migration research
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Migration research and theory
Disciplines
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Disciplines
Methods
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Qualitative research
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Types of study
Roles
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Lund University
University, Lund, Sweden
Senior Research Fellow -
Lund University
University, Lund, Sweden
Research
Europe: the EU regulation of migration
| Authors | Petra Herzfeld Olsson, Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2024 |
| Book Title | Research Handbook on Migration and Employment | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Refugee Labour Mobility to the EU: A Tool Contributing to Fairer Sharing of Responsibilities in the Context of Forced Displacement?
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova, Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2023 |
| Journal Name | REFUGEE SURVEY QUARTERLY |
The Recast EU Blue Card Directive: Towards a Level Playing Field to Attract Highly Qualified Migrant Talent to Work in the EU?
| Authors | Tesseltje de Lange, Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2022 |
| Journal Name | European Journal of Migration and Law |
| Citations (WoS) | 7 |
Work-Based Pathways to Refugee Protection under EU Law: Pie in the Sky?
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2022 |
| Journal Name | European Journal of Migration and Law |
| Citations (WoS) | 5 |
Migrants’ Access to Social Protection in Bulgaria
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova, Dragomir Kolev Draganov |
| Year | 2020 |
| Book Title | Migration and Social Protection in Europe and Beyond (Volume 1). | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Diaspora Policies, Consular Services and Social Protection for Bulgarian Citizens Abroad
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2020 |
| Book Title | Migration and Social Protection in Europe and Beyond (Volume 2) | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Migration and mobility in the EUs Eastern neighbourhood: mapping out the legal and political framework
| Authors | Peter Van Elsuwege, Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2020 |
| Book Title | Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Circular Migration and the Rights of Migrant Workers in Central and Eastern Europe
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2020 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
The external dimension of EU social security coordination
| Authors | Anne-Pieter van der Mei, Pauline Melin, Herwig Verschueren, ... |
| Year | 2018 |
| Journal Name | European Journal of Social Security |
Poland and Bulgaria’s bilateral agreements with Eastern partnership countries in the context of circular migration
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2018 |
| Journal Name | European Journal of Social Security |
Refugees as Migrant Workers after the Global Compacts? Can Labour Migration Serve as a Complementary Pathway for People in Need of Protection into Sweden and Germany?
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2022 |
| Journal Name | Laws | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Suggested Research
The EU’s Approach to Circular Migration in the Context of the Eastern Partnership Neighbourhood
| Authors | Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2018 |
| Book Title | EU external migration policies in an era of global mobilities : intersecting policy universes | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Implementing the EU’s circular migration approach : legal and migrant perspectives on entry and re-entry conditions in Bulgaria and Poland
| Authors | Zvezda VANKOVA |
| Year | 2017 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
From Funding to Financing: Complementary Pathways, Refugee Finance and the Emergence of the Refugee Entrepreneur
| Authors | Daria Davitti, Zvezda Vankova |
| Year | 2025 |
Human rights aspects of immigrant and refugee integration policies : a comparative assessment in selected Council of Europe member states
| Authors | Sergio CARRERA, Zvezda VANKOVA |
| Year | 2019 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Migrant Integration Policy Index 2015
| Authors | Thomas Huddleston, Özge Bilgili, Anne-Linde Joki, ... |
| Year | 2015 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
The cost of non-Europe in the area of legal migration
| Authors | Sergio CARRERA, Lina VOSYLIUTE, Zvezda VANKOVA, ... |
| Year | 2019 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |