Love and Family Across Borders
- Europe Must Act
- 21 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Love and Family Across Borders - An EMA Topic of the Month Report
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Love and family are words that carry deep personal meaning, shaped by culture, experience, and circumstance.
Yet, in the context of migration and asylum, these concepts are often narrowed by legal definitions that fail to reflect the complexity of real human relationships.
When laws determine who counts as “family”, traditionally consisting of a married couple and dependent children, many forms of love and care are left outside their boundaries.
As noted in the Introduction to Migration Studies, “The study of migrant families therefore cuts across the available legal definitions of family and brings to light emerging forms of living together, gender roles, sexualities, kinship ties, and caregiving practices.”
This month’s topic explores Love & Family through the lens of forced migration to Europe. We examine refugee family reunification, defining what it means under EU law. We also take a look at children’s rights, exploring the fundamental support that family life gives to children, which ensures safe and healthy development, and discussing how institutional care and detention continue to obstruct their right to travel across Europe. We highlight alarming cases of child detention and abuse at Europe’s borders, casting a spotlight on the human cost of restrictive migration policies.
We also take a snapshot look at the situation around family reunification in different European countries, discussing recent legislative changes in the Netherlands that could drastically limit family reunification, and examining how Ireland’s housing crisis is undermining the process for many people trying to reunite with their family members. We analyse the UK’s suspension of its refugee family reunification scheme, a move that removes one of the few safe routes for refugees and contradicts expert evidence on integration and well-being. Yet, amid tightening rules, stories of reunion from across Europe remind us of what is at stake: the power of family to restore hope, belonging, and stability after displacement.
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