The price of Fortress Europe: critical reflections on the EU’s migration policies and constitutional horizons

RSC Public Seminar Series, Hilary Term 2026

Series convened by Professor Tom Scott-Smith and Professor Catherine Briddick

About this talk

Ever since the 2015 “migration crisis”, the EU has pursued a wide range of aggressive migration policies which can collectively be described as the continued construction of “Fortress Europe”. Much of the analysis and critique in law and philosophy to date has, understandably, focused on the immediate consequences this has for migrants and asylum seekers, often with deadly outcomes. More recently, there is an emergent debate that analyses how these policies undermine the EU’s constitutional values, such as the rule of law, democracy, and fundamental rights. In this talk, I want to push the conversation beyond the black letter of EU constitutional law and analyse the connection between these migration policies and the deeper level of the constitutional imaginary, the philosophical ideas and beliefs which underpin the project of European constitutionalisation. My hypothesis is that by shifting attention from the content of these migration policies and instead focusing on their place and method, by paying heed to the where and the how of Fortress Europe, two preliminary connections between migration policies and the EU’s liberal constitutional imaginary can be drawn. The first is that the informalisation of migration policies undermines the idea of European integration as a project of “integration through law”. Second, the territorial fragmentation that results from these migration policies undermines one of the deepest aspirations of European integration, namely, to unify Europe and overcome the ‘walls’ and ‘curtains’ that divided the continent in the 20th century. Thus, the talk traces the impact of Fortress Europe migration policies on the broader project of European integration.  

About the speaker

Aristel is a legal and political theorist currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University's Faculty of Law on postcolonial political theory and international migration law as part of the ERC-funded MIGJUST project. From January 2026, Aristel will be a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Law and a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he will develop a theory on the impact of the EU’s migration policies on the constitutional imaginary of European integration. Aristel works at the intersection of constitutional theory, EU law, migration law, critical theory, and postcolonial theory. In 2024, he obtained a PhD in philosophy (summa cum laude) from the University of Leuven’s Institute of Philosophy where he held an individual fellowship from the Flemish Research Council (FWO). In his doctoral project, Aristel worked on a novel approach to EU law at the intersection of constitutional theory and a critique of legal reasoning. The project resulted in five publications, principal among which is “Ideology in the Adjudication of the ECJ”, published in Law and Philosophy in 2023. Aristel also holds an LLM in European and International Public Law (magna cum laude) form the University of Leuven’s Faculty of Law. Beyond academia, he is trained as a classical musician (Royal College of Music, London) and has so far called five countries home.

The seminar will be followed by drinks in the Hall.

Registration not required.

All enquiries should be directed to rsc-outreach@qeh.ox.ac.uk