In the context of restrictive migration regimes in Western democracies, lawyers and activists have organized to provide (free) legal help and representation, as well as to contest immigration policies in Courts (Kawar 2011, 2015). These actors can be analyzed as cause lawyers (Sarat & Scheingold 1998, 2006), as legal activists and legal mobilizations (Kawar 2011; McCann 1994), or as legal intermediaries (Gray & Pélisse 2019; Pélisse 2019; Talesh & Pélisse 2018) who mobilize law and courts to defend immigrants, to resist restrictions, and/or to contest immigration and asylum policies. In doing so, they are involved in the implementation of asylum law and individual rights (Miaz 2017a; b) and they participate in the judicialization of asylum and immigration policies (Hamlin 2014; Kawar 2014, 2015).

This session gathers papers analyzing asylum and migration law in action through the practices and strategies of legal actors defending migrants, representing them, and/or contesting immigration and asylum policies in Courts in different domestic contexts. We especially would like to answer the following questions:

- How do legal intermediaries defend migrants’ rights?

- How do they resist and contest asylum and immigration policies with law?

- To which extent do legal intermediaries conform to or confirm existing legal norms?

- What kind of strategies (strategic litigation) do they develop?

- How do legal opportunities and constraints (Hilson 2002; Vanhala 2011, 2012, 2018) shape these strategies and practices?

Through these case studies, we strive to question the different “types” of judicialized asylum and migration politics that can be observed in different domestic settings.

This panel is organized by Jonathan Miaz and Saskia Bonjour