Law Faculty, Centre for Migration Law
Van Oers joined the RUNOMI network directly after it was founded. She currently holds a sector-plan funded Assistant professor position focusing on the topic of ‘Migrant inclusion: social justice, information and communication’.
What is your role/position in RUNOMI?
Together with Pascal Beckers and Margot van Mulken, I am a RUNOMI coordinator, dedicated to societal impact. This means that, together with other RUNOMI members, I inter alia draft the monthly RUNOMI newsletter, organize the annual congress and provide assistance organizing other RUNOMI related activities. Together with Pascal and Margot, I organize the meetings with the RUNOMI members who have been appointed under the sector-plan.
What is your research about?
I am a lawyer, so my research relates to issues of migrant inclusion and law. I have for instance been analyzing the Dutch legislation relating to migrant integration, comparing it with laws applied in the countries surrounding us. Most of the time, I apply a socio-legal perspective, focusing on questions such as why certain laws were introduced and what their effects are. I however also ask purely legal questions by scrutinizing to what extent Dutch laws and policies are compatible with European and international (human rights) laws and obligations.
Currently, I am also involved in the ‘Migration-Class Nexus Project’, which is a socio-legal study into the connection between class and migration status of third-country nationals in the EU. It aims to answer the questions of what the connection between socio-economic status and legal migration status is, and how this connection can be explained.
What are some of the important issues to your research subject that you would like the world to know about?
We often take for granted that migrants are categorized by laws as being a ‘refugee’, a ‘family migrant’, a ‘highly skilled worker’ etcetera. We thereby forget that these categorizations have far reaching consequences, as someone’s legal status will determine what rights and obligations they have, thereby impacting on their socio-economic status. At the same time, someone’s socio-economic status will affect to a certain extent what legal status they can apply for. The ‘Migration-Class nexus project’ aims to lay bare the connection between socio-economic status and legal migration status.
Selected outputs
Geertsema, K, T. de Lange & R. van Oers (2024), ‘Labour market participation by beneficiaries of temporary protection in the Netherlands. A natural pilot for policy change’, in I. Florczak & J. Adamski (eds.), Mass influx of people from Ukraine. Social entitlements and access to the labour market, Italian Labour Law e-Studies 2, 37–55. Bologna: University of Bologna.
Oers, R. van (2021), ‘Deserving citizenship in Germany and the Netherlands. Citizenship tests in liberal Democracies’, Ethnicities 21 (2), 271-287.