Dr Edit Frenyo

Dr Edit Frenyo is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Stirling, working on migration and refugee law, the human rights of migrants, and how immigration control shapes family life and access to the family justice system.

Her research has two strands. The first is asylum externalisation: how states push protection responsibilities across borders, and the vulnerabilities this creates for people seeking asylum. The second is the increasing transnationalisation of family life, transnational care arrangements, and how the immigrant experience and status impacts the right to family life.

With Professor Renee Luthra (University of Essex), she leads the Nuffield Foundation project Immigrant Families in the Family Justice System (£171,899, 2025–2026). The project examines how immigration status, visa dependency and the “hostile environment” shape parental separation, child contact and maintenance for immigrant families in the UK. Working with legal practitioners and third-sector organisations, it will produce best-practice guidance and inform advocacy on legal aid, family visas and cooperation between the family and immigration jurisdictions.

Between 2020-2022, she was a research associate on the Canadian team of VULNER (Vulnerabilities Under the Global Protection Regime), an EU Horizon 2020 project on how asylum systems identify and respond to vulnerability. Her work on the Canada–US Safe Third Country Agreement analyses how externalised asylum processes generate vulnerability at the border.

Before joining Stirling, Edit was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (2021–22), a Global Fellow at NYU School of Law (2020–21), and a Steinberg Postdoctoral Fellow in Migration Law and Policy at McGill University Faculty of Law (2018–20). At McGill she lectured regularly on the human rights of migrants.

She holds an SJD from Georgetown University Law Center, an LLM from Boston College Law School and a JD from the University of Szeged.

At Stirling she teaches family law (domestic relations) and public international law. She contributes to the Law Division’s work on migration and human rights, including the Scottish Council on Global Affairs project The State of Migration and Refugees in Scotland Amidst a Changing World (2026), and the 'People on the Move' research cluster.

Edit welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD researchers in migration and refugee law. She supervises doctoral projects on:

•immigration and asylum externalisation •refugee and asylum law in comparative perspective •vulnerability and protection in asylum systems •the human rights of migrants •immigration status, family life and family justice •transnational families and care migration

AREAS OF RESEARCH:

Migration and refugee law, human rights law, family law and policy, international law, transnational care work, welfare and social policy.

PUBLICATIONS:

Frenyó E (2025) Transnational ‘granny-nannies’ – promoting visibility and rights for aging caregivers in transnational families. In: Rubio Marin R, Estrada-Tanck D, Menezes Queiroz B & Staiano F (eds.) Handbook on Migration and Human Rights. Political Science and Public Policy 2025. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 256-280. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035302253.00023

Unsafe from Any Angle: Vulnerability-Generation on the US–Canada Border. Frenyo, Edit. Laws 11, no. 3 (June 2022): 44. https://www.mdpi.com/1651826

Internalizing the Consequences of Externalized Asylum Processes – Canadian Federal Court affirms that the Safe Third Country Agreement with the US violates asylum seekers’ fundamental rights under Canadian law, Edit Frenyó, Cahiers de l’EDEM, October, 2020. https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/juri/cedie/actualites/canadian-council-for-refugees-v-canada-immigration-refugees-and-citizenship-2020-fc-770.html

Vulnerability in the Canadian Protection Regime: Research Report on the Policy Framework. 2021. VULNER Research Report 1. 2021, (by Midori Kaga, Delphine Nakache, Melissa Anderson, François Crépeau, Anthony Delisle, Nicholas Fraser, Edit Frenyó, Anna Purkey, Dagmar Soennecken, Ritika Tanotra) https://www.vulner.eu/77122/Research-Report-1-Canada

Transnational Families and the Right to Family Life in the Age of Global Migration, in: Stark, Barbara, and Jacqueline Heaton. 2019. Routledge Handbook of International Family Law. 1 edition. Abingdon, Oxon UK ; New York, NY: Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315613079-19/transnational-families-edit-frenyo

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND INVITED TALKS

“Migration and the Transnationalization of Care: Dignity and Domestic Care Work in Europe” Paper presented at the Law and Society Association 2019 Annual Meeting, Washington DC USA May 31, 2019

“Europe’s Migrant Crisis Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of Global Mobility” Keynote Address and presentation at McDaniel College Global Issues Colloquium, Westminster MD March 07, 2016 http://www.mcdaniel.edu/information/headlines/news-at-mcdaniel/archive/human-rights-lawyer-to-speak-on-europes-migrant-crisis

Invited Expert Speaker at Tarrant County Colleges Global Citizens Club, Fort Worth, TX. Featured in TCC The Collegiate: “South hosts talk on migration” Spring 2016 http://collegian.tccd.edu/?p=29533

“Transnational Families and the Right to Family Life” Presented at the IGLP Conference, Harvard Law School, Cambridge MA, June 01, 2015

“Global Migration and Transfrontier Childhoods” Presented at the 8th Annual Cornell Inter-University Graduate Student Conference, Ithaca, NY April 14, 2012