Shifting Borders and the Right to Asylum

The Digital Lecture Series reflects on the history, present, and future of human rights as a political promise that must be continuously defended. Against the backdrop of Jewish migration history, five scholars, together with journalist Dinah Riese (taz), examine the development of international refugee protection from diverse perspectives. In the process, historical achievements become visible – achievements that are increasingly being questioned today. Which experiences from the past, and which legal or philosophical perspectives, can help overcome current limits in thinking about migration? And where can we find approaches in the here and now that point toward a more open future?

Ayelet Shachar 

Ayelet Shachar is Professor in Comparative Law at the University of California, Berkeley and Visiting Professor at Harvard Law school in 20206. Trained in law and political theory, she specializes in the comparative study of citizenship and immigration. In 2019 she was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and 2024 the American Political Science Association’s Migration & Citizenship Career Achievement Award. She authored The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility  (Manchester University Press, 2020) and is lead editor of the Oxford Handbook of Citizenship  (Oxford University Press, 2017 & 2020). Together with Seyla Benhabib, she convened a series of transnational workshops culminating in the publication of Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects: Migration, Asylum, and Shifting Borders (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Dinah Riese

Dinah Riese heads the domestic news desk at taz newspaper. Previously, she worked as a taz editor covering migration and integration. She has received multiple awards for her reporting on the so-called advertising ban on abortions, Paragraph 219a of the German Criminal Code. Her interview with survivors of the Halle attack was nominated for the Reporter:innenpreis (Reporters’ Prize). In March 2022, she co-authored the book Selbstbestimmt. Für reproduktive Rechte (Self-Determined: For Reproductive Rights) with Gesine Agena and Patricia Hecht, published by Klaus Wagenbach.