Juan M. Amaya-Castro will deliver the ninth Sarah van Walsum lecture on 28 September 2023, 13:30 – 15:00, at Theater 5 (NU-building) on campus of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The title of lecture is ‘Why do it? Finding Purpose in the Labour of Migration and Refugee Law’

Drawing from his experience in the Colombian context, Juan M. Amaya-Castro will talk of the challenges and complexities of developing a migration and refugee law infrastructure, by the State, in civil society, and in academia. What does migration control, migration professionalism, and migration scholarship mean, and what does it do, both in the Global South and beyond? Amaya-Castro proposes a global and political economy perspective, and argues that to think of migration law work as both part of the solution and part of the problem, can offer meaningful insights.

The Sarah van Walsum lecture is the annual opening of the Master’s program of International Migration and Refugee Law and commemorates our late colleague Sarah van Walsum.

Juan M. Amaya-Castro is associate professor of International Law at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. Juan worked at the University of Peace in Costa Rica, did his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and has been a visiting researcher at Harvard University.