Patricia Mindus
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Patricia Mindus is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Uppsala University in Sweden. She has an interest in legal realism, democratic theory and migration. Signature contributions include the functionalist theory of citizenship and the theory of migration as institutional fact. She is Wallenberg Academy Fellow (2014-24), and served as project leader of the research program Higher Education and Democracy funded by Uppsala University SSH area, as the Director of Uppsala Forum for democracy, peace and justice, and as the President of the Swedish IVR. In 2023, she also serves as associated director of studies at the Fondation Maison Science de l’Homme.
In September 2023, she joins the Paris IAS as part of the French Institutes for advanced Study fellowship program - FIAS - co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 945408. Her fellowship also benefits from the support of the RFIEA+ LABEX, with a national funding (Grant ANR-11-LABX-0027-01).
Research Interests
Migration and Citizenship Studies, Legal Realism
Towards a Realist Theory of Migration Law
Migration law regulates changes in a person’s legal position or status vis-à-vis one or more state(s) or political communities, and concerns the right to stay in a country, to be protected from deportation, to be reunited with family members to name only some of the many legal positions that determine a person’s migration status. Other such legal positions concern the individual’s working life and socio-economic social life in general. The concept of status in law is a one of which we may offer an empirical explanation, even if it is not itself an empirical concept. Philosophers say that we exercise our deontic power by creating different forms of statuses through constitutive rules. Indeed, legal statuses concern what philosophers today often call institutional facts, where a function is attributed to something that does not have this function in virtue of its empirical properties. This project builds on these two insights in order to question received wisdom concerning the nature of migration, the epistemic grounds behind assumptions concerning central notions in migration law such as residence, stay, sojourn, abode, domicile etc, with the view to offer arguably more justified views. The project explores the distinction between the movement of bodies in space and the institutional facts governing migration related statuses so as to shed new light on how law constitutes a person’s status as a migrant. The aim is to offer a fresh take on migration theory with relevance for law and policy.
Key Publications
Hacia una teoría funcionalista de la ciudadanía, Marcial Pons, 2019
European Citizenship After Brexit Palgrave Studies in European Politics, Palgrave 2017
The Cambridge Companion to Legal Positivism, Cambridge University Press (2021). Co-edited with Torben Spaak. Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles Award 2021
Latest Publications
Mindus, Patricia. “On Population Design: Using Migration Law to Dismantle Constitutional Democratic Institutions”, in S. Smet & V. Stoyanova, Migrants’ Rights, Populism and Legal Resilience in Europe, Cambridge University Press 2022, pp. 70-93.
Mindus, Patricia. “Towards a Theory of Arbitrary Law-making in Migration Policy”. Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics, 2020, 14(2), 9-33.
 Workshop organized by Patricia Mindus, professor of philosophy of Law at Uppsala University, 2023-2024 Paris IAS Fellow  Lecture by Patrica Mindus, 2023-2024 Paris IAS Fellow, as part of the study day dedicated to "Scandinavian Realism today" at Université Paris Nanterre  Call for contributions to the Special Workshop at the 31st IVR Wolrd Congress  Lecture by Patricia Mindus, professor of philosophy at the University of Uppsala, 2023-2024 Paris IAS Fellow, in the "Séminaire de Philosophie du Droit" of the Université Paris-Nanterre  Talk by Patricia Mindus, professor of philosophy at Uppsala University and 2023-2024 Paris IAS Fellow, in the "Demos & Migration" seminar at the Université Côte d'Azur's Faculty of Law and Political Science  Lecture by Patricia Mindus, Uppsala University, in the "Théorie du Droit" Master's course at Université Paris Nanterre  Keynote speech by Patricia Mindus, 2023-2024 Paris IAS Fellow, as part of the "15th Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy" |
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