MOBILE - Mobility Law Open Lab with Péter Szigeti

In Search of Comparative and Structural Histories of Migration Law

Presenter: Dr. Péter D. Szigeti is a Collegium Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Turku Faculty of Law, and an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. His main areas of research are the history of migration and citizenship law; the intersection of property law and environmental protection; and jurisdiction and territoriality in international law. His work has been published in the Harvard International Law Journal, the Leiden Journal of International Law, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and Political Science Quarterly, among other venues.

Presentation: Despite migration being a red-hot political issue for most of this century, there has been little notable work done in the history of migration law – especially as legal history, that offers lessons for lawyers. Histories of migration law have been written almost exclusively in national frameworks, with a focus on legislative history and social history (especially racism and gender); but there have been very few intellectual histories, conceptual histories, comparative or international histories of migration law. Yet migration law is an innovative, even experimental field with rich connections to and lessons for constitutional law, family law, international law and jurisprudence. In this presentation, I hope to offer a sketch of the possibilities of new research into the history of migration law, and a sketch of its structural transformations and periodizations. Migration law is the consequence of postcolonial national-building in the Americas and Australasia, with a link to citizenship as its sine qua non. Its identity has been tainted by the confusions of migration policy in contexts outside of nation-building, and by the switch to temporary statuses all over immigration and refugee law.

Time: 30 April 2026 14:00-15:15

Place: MOBILE – 6B-2-22 Southern Campus + ONLINE

Online participation

For online participation, please contact MOBILE's Student Assistant Kamille at xdm242@jur.ku.dk to receive a Zoom link.