Lost in Translation? The Promises and Challenges of Integrating Empirical Knowledge on Migrants’ Vulnerabilities into Legal Reasoning

Abstract The concept of “vulnerability” has become all-pervasive in EU asylum law and the ECtHR case law on asylum seekers and migrants, where it has acquired various legal meanings and functions. But many controversies remain on the legal nature, definition, and consequences of “vulnerability.” Based on lessons learned in the process of establishing the overall research design of the Horizon 2020 VULNER project and coordinating its implementation, this article identifies the contribution that anthropological knowledge can bring to ongoing legal debates and reflects on the conceptual and practical challenges that emerge when engaging in such an endeavor. First, the article shows the potential of anthropological research methods and concepts to shed light on the experiences of vulnerability as they are lived by migrants, and to reveal and question the underlying social and political dynamics behind the increased success of vulnerability in legal reasoning. Second, it argues that anthropology can only bring a useful contribution to legal debates on “vulnerability” if the knowledge it produces is adequately translated into legal reasoning—which requires acknowledging the differences between the goals of anthropological analyses, which are all-encompassing and seek to depict human experiences in all their complexities, and legal conceptualizations, which require establishing clearly defined notions that can be operationalized in—relatively—certain ways by decision-makers on the ground and that allow them to strike a balance between competing interests.