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About PROTECT

PROTECT The Right to International Protection. A Pendulum between Globalization and Nativization? is an EU-funded research project launched on 1 February 2020. We study the impacts of the UN's Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration, which are two non-binding frameworks promoting international cooperation and responsibility-sharing as key solutions to handle global refugee flows. By studying how the Compacts are received and implemented in different countries, and how they interact with existing legal frameworks and governance architectures, we investigate the Compacts' impact on refugees' right to international protection.

Read our research summary
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Our research

PROTECT consists of 11 Work Packages, which are the building blocks of the project. Each Work Package investigates the impact of the Global Compacts in different ways - such as how they affect citizens' and civil societies’ recognition of the right to international protection, how they interact with existing institutional architectures of asylum determination and legal frameworks such as the 1951 Convention, and how they impact the public discourses on refuge and migration circulating in the media and on social media.

In this video from our Kick-off Conference in Brussels, you can get a short introduction to our research objectives.

More on our Work Packages
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Who are we?

PROTECT consists of 11 partner universities in Europe, South Africa, and Canada. We are political scientists, legal scholars, and anthropologists. We have expertise in political theory, legal theory, cleavage theory, public sphere theory, multilevel global governance, and ethnography. In our partner presentation series, you can read more - and watch video presentations - about our researchers, their research interests and role in the project.

Get to know our researchers
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(Re)Watch talks and discussions from the Midterm Conference on 26- 27 August

(Re)Watch the Expert Forums from 2021

Recent publications and popular reads

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Publication
PROTECT's first four deliverables are publicly available
Blog
World Refugee Day Blog Series: The State of International Protection in 2021
Policy Brief
Our first Policy Brief: Devising Mechanisms for International Refugee Protection
News
A World in Refuge: Four migration researchers on global displacement

(Re)Watch our 2020 Expert Forums:

In November 2020, the PROTECT project organized three Expert Forums to take stock of the Global Compacts and discuss the current protection needs of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe, Canada, and South Africa. The Forums brought together academics in the field of migration and refugee studies and law – and representatives from organizations such as the UN Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration, and Civil Society Organizations such as Lawyers for Human Rights and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. Watch talks and discussions below:

Featured vlogs and presentations:

On our YouTube channel, you can watch video presentations of our research objectives by our Work Package leaders and stay updated on our latest video blogs, presentations, and comments on current issues. You can also access videos from PROTECT events such as our kick-off conference in Brussels in 2020. Below is a selection of some of the videos featuring PROTECT researchers. Go to our YouTube channel to browse our playlists.

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Newsletter

Stay updated on our activities, publications and events by signing up for our quarterly newsletter.

Media Appearances

Explore our researchers’ media appearances in news articles and podcasts in national and international media outlets

Contact

PROTECT is led by Professor Hakan G. Sicakkan from the University of Bergen, Norway. Contact the Coordination and Management team here.

Press releases

Migration, refugee governance and asylum issues are frequent topics on the global agenda. PROTECT issues press releases commenting on issues on the global agenda.

Where are we?

Our partner universities

The PROTECT researchers are based at 12 universities in 7 countries in Europe, and South Africa, and Canada. Click on the pins in the map below to see where in the world our researchers work from.

> Read more about our partners here

Our fieldwork sites

Our field researchers conduct ethnographic fieldwork in six migratory hotspots in Spain, France, Greece, Italy, South Africa, and Canada. On the map below, you can navigate our field sites and see the leading researchers.

> Read more about our fieldwork here