How race and gender function in European family migration law

A growing literature has addressed the colonial and racialised roots of European migration law. This contribution extends its analysis to European family migration law, using the lens of mixed-status families. It answers the question of how European family migration policy was informed by race as well as gender and continues to be a white male privilege. It does so in three steps. First, it discusses the concept of sovereignty to control migration as a racial as well as a colonial concept. This contribution will demonstrate how it is also gendered. Second, it will discuss how the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Union migration law framework that have informed family migration have gendered and racialised effects. Third, although both of these legal frameworks rely on the sovereignty of states to control migration, Member States claim that their sovereignty is under attack and try to take back control; the way they do that is built on racialised and gendered notions of couples and families.