Violence against Women, Migration Law, and Regimes of Exception

As part of DiploSem, CISD’s New Frontiers in Diplomacy Seminar Series, this event explores how migration control, gender-based violence, and international legal regimes intersect in contemporary world politics. At a time of intensifying border governance and mounting backlash against migrants’ and women’s rights, how do legal systems respond when violence is experienced under conditions of precarious status? And what does this reveal about the relationship between sovereignty, discrimination, and international norms?

This event marks the publication of (Oxford University Press, September 2025) by Dr Catherine Briddick. The monograph develops a new framework for evaluating how migration status shapes experiences of violence and compounds disadvantage. Integrating doctrinal, empirical, and theoretical analysis, the book examines how legal regimes create, and can potentially undo, forms of structural discrimination.

Beginning in the UK and under the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights, the analysis broadens to engage European Union law and the Council of Europe’s Trafficking and Istanbul Conventions. Structured around the legal challenges brought by migrant women themselves, the book highlights how courts become arenas in which questions of status, protection, and accountability are contested.

In her talk, Dr Briddick will reflect on:

• How migration status alters the experience and recognition of violence
• The role of national courts, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union in scrutinising discriminatory treatment
• The concept of “regimes of exception” in migration governance
• The place of the Istanbul Convention amid wider political backlash against migrants’ and women’s rights across Europe

Bringing together perspectives from international law, feminist jurisprudence, migration studies, and diplomacy, the event invites an interdisciplinary audience to consider how legal institutions mediate the tensions between border control and human rights , and what this means for the future of international cooperation and norm development.

The event will conclude with an audience Q&A.

About the Speaker:

Dr Catherine Briddick is Andrew W. Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Antony’s College. She is Course Director for the MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. As scholar of human rights and refugee law, her work draws on feminist approaches to international law to analyse protection, discrimination, and migration governance across UK, EU, and international legal frameworks. Her research has been cited by the European Court of Justice and the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons. She is also a barrister (non-practising) and previously represented individuals before courts and tribunals.

This event is organised by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD) at SOAS University of London, as part of DiploSem: New Frontiers in Diplomacy Seminar Series.

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