Privacy vs Protection: The right to private & family life in the EU Immigration and Asylum System & the lived experiences of asylum seekers in Greece

This thesis will critically examine the European Asylum and Immigration legal regime with a focus on struggles around privacy and family life. The right to privacy and family life is enshrined in international and national law, but routinely violated in practice including during the very process that is designed to afford protection to refugees and asylum seekers. The Common European and Asylum System (CEAS) creates legal "grey holes" (Edwards 2020) that allow for constant surveillance, unregulated body-searches, confiscation of belongings, and intrusive questioning. Sophia will conduct analysis with ethnographic methods and engage with refugees and asylum seekers in Greece, and primarily with LGBTI+ individuals, who are often in the precarious position of having to share private information in order for their claims to be processed. Her goals will be to assess the extent of unauthorised breaches of privacy during the asylum determination process in Europe, the consequences of these, and what remedies could safeguard asylum seekers' privacy in the future.