BY DR MAJA GRUNDLER
Practitioners of immigration and asylum law share much in common with legal academics studying the field – not least the aim of migrants achieving access to justice – but different professional requirements, pressures, and methods of working mean the two groups often operate in isolation. Citing examples from emerging research, Dr Maja Grundler considers how increased practitioner-academic collaboration could lead to better outcomes for clients, and explains how practitioners can help shape the process.
As an academic working on immigration and asylum law, I have long admired immigration law practitioners: their detailed knowledge of the Immigration Rules, their timely comments on policy developments in immigration law and, most of all, their dedication to their clients and the way their work has a tangible impact on real people’s lives.
Having a tangible impact on people’s lives cannot be said, however, for my work, or for the work of a large number of legal academics. While we also tend to know a lot about the law, and although many of us working on migration law care deeply about refugees, people seeking asylum and other migrants, our work often remains theoretical, its reach extending predominately to other (legal) academics.
Despite this, academics of all disciplines are frequently asked to generate ‘impact’, defined as ‘an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia’. Even if we were not asked to think about how our work will generate this type of impact, many of us would like our work to be useful to migrants themselves.
With these thoughts in mind, I began trying to forge connections between UK immigration law practitioners and legal academics working on immigration, asylum and nationality law a couple of years ago. This initially took the shape of knowledge-exchange events, then turned into co-editing a Special Issue on “Research and Practice Dialogues on Complex Protection Claims” for the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law (JIANL) with Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax and Dr Nicolette Busuttil, and has now morphed into a research project on immigration law practitioners’ engagement with legal academic work (more on this below).
The articles from the JIANL Special Issue are now freely accessible on the ILPA website and this blog post includes an overview of the aims of the Special Issue. By making the Special Issue articles available open access, we hope to continue the conversation on how practitioners and academics can enter into a productive dialogue on their shared aims and work together towards their realisation.
Obstacles to and Opportunities for Increased Collaboration
In compiling the Special Issue, and in writing the Editorial, we started from the assumption that immigration law practitioners and legal academics working on immigration, asylum, and nationality law share the same aim: ensuring access to justice for people seeking asylum, refugees and other migrants. We see this premise as an opportunity for greater engagement whereby academics could turn original research into practical arguments which can then be used by practitioners.
But despite practitioners and academics having a shared purpose, the two groups often operate in isolation, shaped by different professional requirements, priorities, and modes of working. While the worlds of practice and academia overlap to an extent – for example, some practitioners publish in academic journals, while academics may also practise law – on a practical level, their structures often stand in opposition to one another. Take, for example, the requirement of peer-review and the generally lengthy publication process on the one hand, and practitioners’ need to comply with tight deadlines and to provide succinct arguments on the other.
Further, priorities for both groups are very different, with academics expected to produce ‘world-leading’ research and impact, while practitioners must act first and foremost in the best interest of their individual client.
Despite these differences, we believe there is scope for academic work informing and even aiding immigration law practice, if only it can be ‘translated’.
Translational Research
Academics will often spend many months or even years looking at one particular area of law. They conduct empirical examinations of the law, systematise it, identify gaps and contradictions in judicial reasoning, consider trends, make comparisons, and ultimately propose solutions. While the value of academic work should not be measured by whether their conclusions can be successfully tested in a court of law, those academics wishing to engage more deeply with the potential practical application of their work would undoubtedly benefit from better understanding how practitioners work, their priorities and the conditions ‘on the ground’.
To consider how legal academic work can develop greater practical impact, we borrow the concept of ‘translational research’ from the discipline of medicine. In medical science, the term refers both to transforming scientific findings into treatments and to ensuring those treatments reach patients effectively. By analogy, translating legal academic work into practical arguments requires first converting academic work into arguments that can be deployed effectively in UK domestic law; second, those arguments must be communicated in ways that reach and resonate with practitioners.
In the JIANL Special Issue, three academics attempt the first part of this process by thinking about how their research may be converted into arguments potentially of use to domestic immigration law practitioners. However, in our Editorial, we recognise that publications in a journal hidden behind a paywall – albeit one aimed at practitioners – are likely not the most effective way of reaching practitioners.
To explore how each of these two steps in the process of translation might work in practice and, more broadly, to understand whether practitioners are interested in engaging with legal academic work in such a way, I am in the process of conducting research through a survey and semi-structured interviews. The research project is ongoing, and practitioners are invited to take part in the survey, at the end of which is the option to sign up to be interviewed. These follow-on discussions will give practitioners the opportunity to explain, for example, what type of academic work (if any) they would find most helpful in order to help progress a case, or the format an academic argument should take in order to be court-ready.
The Special Issue Articles
Those interested in academic-practitioner collaboration can read more about our thought process in compiling the Special Issue and access the individual articles here.
The Special Issue contains various contributions considering different aspects of academic-practitioner collaboration. ILPA Legal Director Zoe Bantleman explores responsible scholarship and practice in the field of immigration, asylum and nationality law, arguing that both practitioners and academics have a responsibility to pursue systemic change and engage in tactical legal thinking to challenge the law’s exclusionary effects. Barrister Colin Yeo, meanwhile, argues for the importance of a ‘community of law’ in the field of UK immigration law to aid its clarity, predictability and development.
As mentioned above, the Special Issue also contains three contributions from legal academics who have translated their work and adapted it to UK domestic context while developing practical arguments. Yulia Ioffe, Associate Professor at University College London, examines family reunification claims of asylum-seeking children, advocating for a child-centred interpretation of Article 8 ECHR that elevates the best interests of the child to a ‘paramount’ consideration. She argues that, interpreted in light of international law, Article 8 of the ECHR requires the articulation of a distinctive child-centred approach to family reunification. She suggests that practitioners representing refugee children in family reunification proceedings should argue that the best interests of the child must be a ‘paramount’ rather than just a ‘primary’ consideration in family reunification cases. This argument could impact family reunification claims under Article 8 ECHR and applications for leave outside the rules on compassionate grounds. It could also inform practitioners’ efforts in advocating for unaccompanied refugee children’s right to sponsor their parents under the family reunion route. Ioffe’s article thus provides practitioners with arguments as to how international law and evolving Strasbourg jurisprudence can ensure that the rights of refugee children to family reunification are effectively protected in the UK.
Malak Benslama-Dabdoub, Lecturer in Law at Royal Holloway University, explores the underutilised potential of statelessness status. She explores the international law instruments underpinning refugee status on the one hand and stateless status on the other, noting that although the two provide for very similar rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention provides greater protection than the 1954 Statelessness Convention. This, along with a range of obstacles to obtaining stateless status in the UK, which the article examines, explains why refugee status is often prioritised over refugee status. Nonetheless, Benslama-Dabdoub argues that practitioners in the UK should consider the value of statelessness protection in cases where refugee status is difficult or impossible to secure since stateless status does provide important protections. Thus, this article alerts practitioners to the benefits of stateless protection while outlining the procedure for and potential obstacles in securing the relevant status for their clients.
Finally, my own article analyses trafficked persons’ asylum claims in order to highlight protection gaps for persons at risk of (re-)trafficking, but also the potential of these cases to extend protection to additional claimants. I argue that practitioners should consider whether vulnerability reasoning in the future risk analysis can secure protection for male trafficked persons and for persons without a prior experience of being trafficked. I also suggest that practitioners should examine whether proposed state protection measures effectively counter trafficked persons’ vulnerabilities and whether such measures are, in fact, provided by the country of origin. Finally, I highlight the relevance of the vulnerability analysis for the nexus enquiry, showing how this can assist the argument that trafficked persons are members of a ‘particular social group’ in the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention. My article provides practitioners with arguments which have the potential to assist them in representing individuals at risk of (re-)trafficking, providing a pathway to secure access to international protection.
All articles are available as author manuscript versions. Should you wish to cite or otherwise use any of the articles, please approach the author for a link to the official published version of their article.
Why get involved?
Currently, there is no easy way for practitioners to identify legal academic research which may be of use for their case work. As a result, legal academic work is rarely, if ever, effectively deployed in practice. To make improved collaboration between immigration law practitioners and legal academics a reality, academics need to know more about practitioners’ engagement with legal academic work. The aim of my research is to find concrete solutions to some of the problems outlined above. It seeks to understand whether practitioners could benefit from legal academic work, what shape and format such work should take, and how it can be communicated and disseminated effectively. This could, in turn, lead to improved outcomes and access to justice for practitioners’ clients.
Please consider taking part by completing the survey here. There is also an option to sign up for being interviewed at the end of the survey.
Dr Maja Grundler is Assistant Professor at Northumbria Law School where her research focuses on the intersection of refugee law and irregular migration, human trafficking and migrant smuggling. She holds a PhD in Law from Queen Mary, University of London, and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. She is an academic member of ILPA, the co-founder of the Human Trafficking Research Network and a Research Affiliate at the Refugee Law Initiative.
ILPA invites members and other leading experts to contribute articles to its monthly blog. The views expressed in all blog posts are the authors’ own and are not necessarily those of ILPA.
- Document Date
- Wednesday January 28, 2026