Legal mobilisation around migration in the EU borderlands: a research agenda

Legal mobilisation, broadly understood as the use of legal and judicial systems as instruments of social and political change, has increasingly been employed as a repertoire of collective action in pro-migrant solidarity efforts worldwide, particularly within the European Union. Scholars have examined a variety of cases, initiatives, and jurisdictions. However, existing research has rarely addressed the distinctive case of legal mobilisation around migration in borderlands, despite its growing empirical relevance. In this article, I propose a research agenda that highlights what is unique about the use of law in the contentious politics of migration in border areas, and explain why and how this phenomenon warrants further study. First, I review the current literature on legal mobilisation related to migration. Next, I critically examine the distinctiveness of borderlands as sites of legal mobilisation compared to other forms of collective action, engaging with insights from socio-legal studies, border studies and contentious politics studies. Finally, I outline several research avenues to help conceptualise and explore how this phenomenon unfolds in the EU borderlands.