Irina Fehr is a socio-legal scholar specialized in combining doctrinal and social science methods including interviews and legal ethnography. Her research examines the intersection of the ‘law in the books’ and the ‘law in action’ with a particular focus on criminal and migration law.

She is currently a researcher in the project Water Crimes – Unpunished Wrongdoing, which studies the functioning and performance of criminal prosecution in the field of water-related offences, as well as the scope and adequacy of the applicable criminal provisions, and the social practices relating to legally regulated water protection. Her research focuses on the situational factors that foster water-related delinquency, investigating how actors in different occupational sectors handle substances that may pollute water, and how they interact with the penal framework on water protection.

Between 2021 and 2026, Irina Fehr was a PhD candidate in law at Tilburg University (Netherlands). Her doctoral thesis studies the role of criminal justice in migration control at external EU borders, focusing on criminalization of unauthorized mobility and crimes committed during border control, with a particular focus on border violence in Croatia. Her doctoral project lies at the juncture of EU migration law and policy, criminal law, and border criminology, investigating both over- and under-criminalization as strategies to control migration.

Irina Fehr has worked on several research projects in the areas of criminal and migration law, including on child labor exploitation among Syrian refugees or the criminal protection of whistleblowers. She holds a socio-legal M.A. in European Global Studies from the University of Basel, and a B.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Zurich

Research

Researcher in the research project Water Crimes – Unpunished Wrongdoing funded by the SNSF.

Teaching

MA in European Global Studies (University of Basel)

BA in Social Sciences (Major: Political Science, minor: Modern History, University of Zurich)

Fehr, I. (2025). State-perpetrated Crimes against Migrants? Addressing Accountability in Croatian Migration Control through Criminal Law. European Journal of Migration and Law, 27(2-3), 279-311.

Fehr, I. (2025). State Crimes against Migrants as a Face of Crimmigration: Rethinking the Crime-Migration Nexus. In Mobile Working Paper Series (62).

Fehr, I. (2024). Unmasking state-perpetrated crimes during migration control – a new face of crimmigration. In Border Criminologies Blog.

Fehr, I. and Alpes, MJ. (2024). Pushing states to evidence pushbacks: Lessons from MH v. Croatia for intersecting domestic criminal law and international human rights. In Border Criminologies Blog.

Fehr, I. (03.04.2024). Podcast episode ‘Coffee with the expert’ from NOVA School of Law’s Refugee and Migration Clinic.

Fehr, I. and Alpes, MJ. (2023). Pushing states to evidence pushbacks: Lessons from M.H. v. Croatia for intersecting domestic criminal law and international human rights. In Dissect blog series.

Fehr, I. and Rijken C. (2022). Child labor among Syrian Refugees in Turkey. In Frontiers in Human Dynamics: Refugees and Conflict.

Fehr, I. (2021). Enforcing the rights of migrants with irregular status: City ID cards as a remedy?. In cognitio–studentisches Forum für Recht und Gesellschaft (Vol. 1).

Fehr, I. (2021). City ID Cards and their Potential for Irregular Migrants Affected by Domestic Violence. In Global Europe–Basel Papers on Europe in a Global Perspective (121), 3-18.

Fehr. I (2017). Tiefe Wahlteilnahme von Schweizerinnen und Schweizern mit Migrationshintergrund — sind die Eltern schuld? In DeFacto.