Routes Conversation on Entangled Asylum in the Nordic Region

Book abstract

What role does human rights law play in asylum adjudication? This seemingly straightforward question unfolds into a nuanced puzzle capturing how law operates in practice. In Entangled Asylum in the Nordic Region, Sarah Scott Ford explores how refugee law and human rights law have become ‘entangled,’ inviting us to view their complex interaction not as a problem to overcome, but as a prism for understanding how contemporary international law really works.

The Nordic countries provide a compelling case study, as a region with a long history of compliance but increasingly marked by anti-immigrant politics and policy experimentation. As political pressures bear down against decades of rights-focused legal consolidation, a critical testing ground emerges where international law faces some of its most rigorous challenges.

Drawing on interviews with judges, decision makers, senior officials and counsel, Sarah Scott Ford shows how legal practitioners actually interpret and apply international law in their daily work, offering vital insights into how migrants' rights claims are negotiated and contested in contemporary legal practice.

Bio

Sarah Scott Ford is a legal sociologist and a postdoctoral researcher at the Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law (MOBILE) at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on the role of international law in national and institutional contexts, and what unfolds when courts become forums for shaping migration matters.

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