Maybritt Jill Alpes

Dr. Maybritt Jill Alpes (she/her) is a legal anthropologist of migration at the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University in Beirut and at CESSMA in Paris. She currently acts as principal investigator for “REMOVED: Removal Infrastructures for Syrians in Lebanon and Turkey,” funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation (2024- 2026). She also received the prestigious Marie Curie fellowship for a project entitled “Chain expulsions: Syrian refugee returns from Europe and Lebanon” (2026 – 2029). Jill’s main research sites are in Cameroon and Lebanon, with additional fieldwork sites in West Africa (Nigeria, Niger, Mali, DRC), Turkey, and Europe (France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus). Her research combines qualitative-ethnographic methods (observations, interviews) with legal methods (analysis of laws and judgments) and new participatory methods, especially the innovative “future literacy labs.” Jill’s publications decenter debates on migration risks from the perspective of people in places of departure, transnational families, migrant care workers, asylum seekers at European borders, as well as returnees and deportees. Her monograph “Abroad at any cost: Brokering High-risk migration and illegality in West Africa (Routledge),” challenges smuggling and trafficking narratives by considering mobility control as state-making. Jill is a member of the UN Working Group on Returns of the UN Migration Network and has also worked for and in collaboration with foundations and migrants and refugee rights organizations, such as Amnesty, Oxfam, the Danish Refugee Council and Picum.