A legal revolution

In the coming months, we will reveal, through a series of conversations with DNRF center directors, how innovation has evolved at our basic research centers established within the humanities and social sciences. The aim is to shed light on how knowledge creates value in the public debate, in the experience economy, and as a bridge-builder within the world of science.

It is the law that governs

Professor Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen is the center leader of MOBILE (Centre for Global Mobility Law), which is working to create a new understanding of how legal decision-making processes shape opportunities for migration and mobility across national borders.

If we dig deeper into the background of the center’s research, Gammeltoft-Hansen said that it used to be that geography and technology put boundaries on our mobility in the world, but today it is almost always the legal framework that determines our access to mobility. If you have a Danish passport, for example, you have a considerable amount of freedom to cross borders.

“So, today it is the law that governs. But we know next to nothing about how the individual sets of rules interact and how similar rules can work very differently across national borders.”

In short, Gammeltoft-Hansen’s point is that the development that has taken place over several decades creates a legal complexity that is difficult to navigate. This can create errors and cause new rules to have unforeseen consequences.

“It is kind of crazy that we do not have a better basis for decision-making in an area that is so important both politically and economically”, he stated. He continued:

“In some of these cases, it is a matter of life and death that we make the right decisions and do not send anyone back to torture or persecution. And in other cases, it is about the fact that there are gaps in our labor market, and yet it can take months and sometimes over a year before a decision is made. There are rules that can work against retaining employees and all sorts of other things you may not have thought through. Rules that were implemented a long time ago with a completely different purpose. Which later turns out to have several significant drawbacks.”

In the short term and in the long term

Gammeltoft-Hansen mentioned several different projects in MOBILE, which here and now and in the long run can have a major impact on how we handle migration policy in the future.

For example, MOBILE works closely with authorities and the legal profession, and in this area, the researchers are already identifying needs and developing concrete tools that can help the professionin its daily work.

In the long run, it is MOBILE’s collaborations with computer scientists that, according to Gammeltoft-Hansen, will create something completely new and very useful for society and his field of expertise all over the world.

“We have gained access to very large data sets that can help us dive into legal decision patterns and better understand how different evidence or individual assessments affect the outcome. Here, AI tools can help both point out problems and potentially also help to even out differences between how different countries handle similar cases, right down to the individual level.

“You can see patterns in the data the AI models create that the human brain cannot obtain, and we have colleagues in Australia who have already begun to translate this knowledge into usable digital tools in, for example, asylum cases.”

Center somersaults

“I’ve been working on this for a long time, but it’s only now that I’ve started to put the pieces together, to see the big picture,” Gammeltoft-Hansen replied when asked why basic research in his field hadn’t been initiated earlier.

“I come from a field where there has not been much room for basic research; it is not something you can see supported by other foundations,” he explained, then continued:

“MOBILE is the first center of its kind, and here we create the freedom to investigate issues and question existing knowledge that can generate new input to the area. You could say that we create impact by our interdisciplinarity and by daring to challenge and test and, ultimately, perhaps nuance or overturn the principles and ideas that exist in our legal world.”

The personal imprint

Gammeltoft-Hansen has a long-known reputation as a pioneer in the field of mobility law, and in addition to being a highly recognized and cited researcher, he is also the one the media turns to  when it comes to migration policy. He was invited by the government to be  a moderator at a major international immigration conference earlier this year, attended by Danish,  European, and African ministers and heads of several international organizations.

So, it can be seen as an important contribution to the public debate when Gammeltoft-Hansen so generously shares his knowledge and insights, and he is happy to contribute. But he has become more aware of the imprint it makes:

“I am more selective regarding media interviews. You easily become a ‘talking head’ and end up commenting on an existing media debate. My goal is to contribute to a greater extent with a new angle – something where we stand strong on our research, he said. He concluded:

“If we can change the premise of the discussion or bring ideas to life in a different way, in a way that can create concrete changes in how you think about politics, for example, then, in my opinion, it creates value or impact.”