Lisa DI GIACOMO

Localisation Maison des Sciences humaines (tbc) Avenue Antoine Depage, 2 - 1050 Bruxelles Belgique Adresse postale Université libre de Bruxelles Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, 50 - CP 172/01 1050 Bruxelles Belgique lisa.di.giacomo@ulb.be

CV

• 2025: Doctorante en co-tutelle - Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) et Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL).

• 2024-2025: Chercheuse COI (Country-of-Origin Information) - Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen (ESC).

• 2022-2023: Master de Sciences politiques et sociales, Mention Etudes européennnes et internationales, Parcours Sécurité Européenne et Stabilité Internationale - Sciences Po Strasbourg (France).

• 2021-2022: LL.M. in International and European Law, Specialising in Global Affairs - Radboud University (The Netherlands).

Domaines d'intérêt

• Migrations

• Politiques externes de l'Union européenne

• Relations Internationales

• Critical legal studies

Présentation des recherches

Thesis title: EU Migration Diplomacy as Law-Making: An Interdisciplinary Study on Soft Law Formation and its Legal Effects in EU Migration Cooperation with Third Countries.

Project description:The research project examines the role of the European Union's migration diplomacy, through informal and non-binding mechanisms, in establishing legal norms outside its borders. The project considers the way soft law interacts with North African domestic legal orders and political structures, framing EU external migration governance as an instance of transnational law-making. The chosen focus of investigation for the project as a whole is the so-called ‘Rabat process’/Euro-African Dialogue on Migration and Development, and more specifically, Morocco and Tunisia.

In co-tutelle, the interdisciplinary research will be oriented along three interconnected axes. First, it examines the production and circulation of norms, asking how EU soft law instruments are framed and negotiated through migration diplomacy and within the Rabat Process. Second, it analyses their domestic legal effects, investigating how these instruments are translated into national legislation, policy, and administrative practices in Tunisia and Morocco. Third, it highlights the rights impacts and accountability dilemmas that arise from informal governance, particularly regarding women, children, and climate-displaced individuals. Together, these axes allow the project to rethink EU migration cooperation not as a unilateral process of externalisation, but as a form of transnational law-making with profound consequences for sovereignty and human rights.

Promoteur·ices: Julien Jeandesboz, Institut d'études européennes (IEE), Recherche et études en politique internationale (REPI) et Sylvie Sarolea, Institut pour la recherche interdisciplinaire en sciences juridiques (JUR-I), EDEM (Équipe Droits & Migrations).
Ce doctorat s'inscrit dans le cadre d'un projet de recherche plus large, qui sera mené en collaboration avec Eleonora Frasca, chercheuse postdoctorale.