mr. dr. Younous Arbaoui

Younous Arbaoui worked as a primary school teacher in the early 2000s, while studying law at the University of Marrakech. After having completed his bachelor in public law, he moved to Amsterdam in 2004 to study Dutch, international and European law. During his studies, he worked as a volunteer at the Rechtswinkelmigranten in Amsterdam. In 2011, he joined the VU Migration Law Section as junior researcher and then started his PhD research under the supervision of Sarah van Walsum, Thomas Spijkerboer and Hemme Battjes. Between 2015 and 2017, he conducted research for Amnesty International, the Dutch Refugee Council and the International Organization for Migration. In this latter context, he founded the Clinique Juridique Hijra Maroc (migration legal clinic) which provides free legal aid to asylum seekers in Morocco. Between 2017 and 2019, he worked as Advocacy & Coordination officer for the Plateforme Nationale Protection Migrant in Rabat. In 2019, Younous Arbaoui defended a socio-legal PhD thesis presenting a critical frame analysis of the dilemma of doing justice, through law, to individual freedoms without jeopardizing family life, and vice versa. His dissertation is one of the results of the Migration Law as a Family Matter project that was initiated by Sarah van Walsum. Younous Arbaoui then joined the Dutch Refugee Council to work as a Leader of the legal team. Since January 2020, he works as an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam Centre of Migration and Refugee Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.