On April 22-25, 2025, the Faculty of Law hosted Prof. José Ángela Brandariz García from the University of A Coruna, Spain. The Professor conducted two lectures on the issue of criminalization of migration:
1. "Comparative border criminology: Promises and pitfalls"
Scope of the lecture:
Studies on detention, deportation, and border criminology are relatively new, having emerged in the last twenty years across Europe and elsewhere. As any other emerging field, they risk overlooking diversity and generalizing site-specific findings, in a manifestation of what criminology scholars called ‘ethnocentrism’. Comparative studies are crucial to avoid this shortcoming. This talk explores what border criminology research has to gain from adopting a comparative lens that may consider even relatively peripheral EU jurisdictions such as Poland and Spain. In addition, it examines the potential pitfalls of comparative studies in this field.
2. "Deportation and detention policies: A Polish-Spanish comparison"
Scope of the lecture:
Despite being relatively distant countries, Poland and Spain share certain common traits in terms of migration phenomena. Both jurisdictions have witnessed relatively long periods of economic growth in recent years and decades. Relatedly, both of them have been critical destinations of human mobility flows in the recent past. In spite of these similarities, Poland and Spain have relied on very different legal and policy tools to curb irregular migration. This talk comparatively explores border control and immigration enforcement, especially detention and deportation policies, in both countries.
During the mobility training module, Prof. Brandariz García gained knowledge about institutional obstacles preventing researchers from obtaining data on migration control, and had the opportunity to job shadow during fieldwork conducted by researchers from the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology on the eastern border of the EU.
Prof. José Ángel Brandariz García's stay was carried out within the Erasmus+ program.
