The many barriers migrants face when trying to assert their rights

For many migrants, claiming rights means navigating a maze of unfamiliar rules, difficult information and rigid bureaucracy.

Conflicting regulations and specialist language can make existing rights hard to understand and even harder to enforce. Information may be technically available, but difficult to access or interpret for people trying to deal with migration systems.

Elisabeth Scheibelhofer, an associate professor at the University of Vienna’s Institute of Sociology, examines these problems through individual migration stories. She also leads the research group “Interpreting Inequalities in Transnational Migration Societies,” known as INMI.

Scheibelhofer treats migration biographies as individual experiences while also looking for recurring patterns and shared features. That approach highlights how institutional rules and administrative practices can shape the difficulties migrants face when they try to secure rights that formally exist.