Efrat Arbel, KC
Associate Professor
BA (McGill), JD (UBC), LLM, SJD (Harvard Law School); Member of the Bar of British Columbia
- Office:
Allard Hall, Room 345
- Phone: 604 822 6287
- Email: arbel@allard.ubc.ca
Profile
Efrat Arbel is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law. Her work focuses on the law and policy of immigration detention, refugee protection, and border governance. She has published widely in these fields. She is a member of the Bar of British Columbia, and was honoured with a King’s Counsel designation in 2025.
Prior to joining the Allard School of Law, Dr. Arbel completed her masters studies and doctoral degree at Harvard Law School, where she was Canada Research Fellow with the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs and a researcher with the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic.
Dr. Arbel’s research has helped shape law and policy in Canada, and has introduced creative tools to advance legal education and public engagement. She has served as an expert witness in Canadian judicial proceedings and prepared independent research reports for government agencies. She has also engaged in consultations with, among others, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She has appeared before committees of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate. Dr. Arbel undertakes pro bono litigation within her field of research, and appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada as intervener co-counsel in Canadian Council for Refugees v Canada. She previously served as an advisor to the BC Immigration Holding Center Support Program, and on the Executive Committee of UBC’s Centre for Migration Studies. She conducts training for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, and is a member of the International Editorial Board of Oxford University’s Border Criminologies.
Dr. Arbel is recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship and the UBC Humanities Public Engagement Award. She is a frequent media commentator and has been cited by media outlets such as The Globe and Mail, National Post, and The New York Times. She is featured in the documentary film Finding Freedom: the Endless Pursuit of an Elusive Dream.
Research and Publications
To learn more about my research, please visit my PURE Research profile. You can also access my works on the following sites:
Courses
- Refugee Law
- Advanced Charter Law
- Torts
- Crimmigration Seminar
Publications
- “Incalculable Harm: Analyzing the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Immigration Detention in Canada” (with Molly Joeck), (2025), 56(1) Ottawa Law Review 93-150
- “Border Trouble: Critical Reflections on the Safe Third Country Agreement Litigation” (2024), 8(3) International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 240-260
- “Labels, Discourse, and Meaning-Making” (with Erin Goheen Glanville) in C. Clark-Kazak, ed., Forced Migration In/To Canada: From Colonization to Refugee Resettlement (McGill-Queens University Press, 2024), 58-71
- “Immigration Detention in the Age of COVID-19” (with Molly Joeck) in Catherine Dauvergne (ed.), Research Handbook on the Law and Politics of Migration (2021: Edward Elgar Press) 260-276
- Responding to Gender Violence in Immigration Detention: Towards a Trauma-Informed Approach (Vancouver, 2020)
- “Rethinking the ‘Crisis’ of Indigenous Mass Imprisonment” (2019), 34(3) Canadian Journal of Law and Society 437-456
- “Immigration Detention and the Problem of Time: Lessons from Solitary Confinement” (with Ian Davis) (2018) 4(4) International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 326-344
- “Devalued Liberty and Undue Deference: The Tort of False Imprisonment and the Law of Solitary Confinement” (2018) 84 Supreme Court Law Review 43-70
- “Immigration Status, Immutability, and the Limits of Equality Protection in Canadian Law” (with Eileen Myrdahl) in R. Albert, P. Daly and V. MacDonnell (eds) The Canadian Constitution in Transition (University of Toronto Press, 2018) 365-385
- “Bordering the Constitution, Constituting the Border” (2016) 53(3) Osgoode Hall Law Journal 824-852
- “Between Protection and Punishment: The Irregular Arrival Regime in Canadian Refugee Law” in K. Reiter and A. Koenig (eds) Extreme Punishment: Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration, and Solitary Confinement (Palgrave, 2015), 197-219
- “Contesting Unmodulated Deprivation: Sauvé v Canada and the Normative Limits of Punishment” (2015) 4(1) Canadian Journal of Human Rights 121-141
- “Gendered Border Crossings” in E. Arbel, C. Dauvergne, and J. Millbank (eds) Gender in Refugee Law: from the Margins to the Centre (Routledge, 2014), 243-263
- Bordering on Failure: Canada-U.S. Border Policy and the Politics of Refugee Exclusion (with Alletta Brenner) Harvard Immigration and Refugee Law Clinical Program, Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA: 2013)
- "The Culture of Rights Protection in Canadian Refugee Law: Examining the Domestic Violence Cases" (2013) 58(3) McGill Law Journal 729-771,
- "Shifting Borders and the Boundaries of Rights: Examining the Safe Third Country Agreement Between Canada and the United States" (2013) 25(1) International Journal of Refugee Law 65-86
For Professor Arbel's publications available on SSRN, go here: http://ssrn.com/author=1124948
Selected publications are also listed on the Law Library Allard Research Portal.
Research Interests
- Human rights
- Immigration and refugee law
- Jurisprudence, legal theory, and critical studies
- Law and social justice
- Public and constitutional law
- Tort law
How are legal rights and responsibilities negotiated and defined in liminal legal spaces like the border, the detention centre, and the prison?