EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: Re-shaping Migration Governance in Ireland and the EU
 
University College Cork
Institute for the Social Sciences in the 21st Century (ISS21)
Migration & Integration Cluster

27 November 2026 
CACSSS Seminar & Meeting Rooms (O’Rahilly Building, UCC), 12.00 - 16.15

Attendance is free but registration is essential.

Register here
 
The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum entered into force on the 12th of June 2026. Six months onwards, this event aims to explore through academic, policymaking and practice-based accounts how its implementation is (re)shaping migration governance across Europe. Whilst the Pact envisages a more efficient EU migration system, concerns have been raised about its implications for social justice and human rights, through ever-tighter border controls and a shift towards greater use of externalisation, detention and a potential increase of criminalisation of migrants.

Ireland sits at the intersection of several migration governance dynamics in relation to the EU Pact because of: the Common Travel Area with the UK; growing political debate around accommodation and integration; labour shortages and economic migration; relatively recent experience as both a country of emigration and immigration. Legal, political, institutional and social transformations that become increasingly visible through its implementation and require scrutiny in any particular EU national context include: unexpected institutional bottlenecks; gaps between legal design and administrative reality; new forms of cooperation or dependencies; emerging rights concerns; and, opportunities for various stakeholders for a migration governance in line with human rights.

In these early stages of the Pact’s life, we envisage the event as a knowledge exchange and learning space for academic and non-academic participants, through a critical examination of the Pact and with a view to identifying opportunities for solidarity and social justice at different levels of migration governance.

 
Programme

 12.00 - 12.30 Arrival and light lunch
 
12.30 - 14.00 Session 1: Migration governance and human rights in the EU in the Pact's era (Chair: Dr Zana Vathi, UCC)
 
Keynote Speaker:
Prof Cathryn Costello (University College Dublin): Asylum Procedures in Europe after the Pact:  Appraising Access, Arbitrariness and Automation
 
Commentaries:
Prof Adrian Favell, University College Cork
Aoife Dare, Irish Refugee Council
 
14.00 - 14.30 Coffee break and Exhibition
Psychic Tomb – an exhibition of artwork by Robel Solomon, an Eritrean refugee-artist based in Kampala, Uganda, with introduction by Dr Kheira Arrouche (UCC). (This work was developed in collaboration with Dr Tesfalem Yemane, University of Liverpool). 

 
14.30 - 16.00 Session 2. Panel Discussion - the impact of the EU Pact on the ground (Chair: Dr Naomi Masheti, Cork Migrant Centre)
A roundtable discussion including academics, community actors and people with experience of the protection system.