Rethinking family life under article 8 ECHR: towards a broader right to family unity for adult-adult relationships

This thesis examines how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) interprets ‘family’ under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in both migration and non-migration cases, with particular attention to the Court’s approach in the migration context. It argues that this approach is internally inconsistent, culturally biased, and normatively unjustified. While the ECtHR recognises a wide range of adult-adult relationships in non-migration cases, it adopts a markedly narrower, nuclear-family model in the migration context. Adult relatives — such as parents and adult children, adult siblings, and grandparents and adult grandchildren — are excluded altogether or protected only under an exceptionally demanding dependency test. This bifurcated approach fails to reflect contemporary sociological realities and risks indirect discrimination under Article 14 ECHR by privileging a culturally specific conception of family that disproportionately disadvantages migrants. Using an interdisciplinary methodology combining doctrinal analysis, a review of sociological research informed in part by cross-national survey evidence, and expert interviews, the thesis demonstrates that adult-adult kinship ties are widely recognised as integral components of family across cultures. These ties provide essential emotional, practical, and intergenerational support and are central to the functioning of national and transnational families. Physical distance does not automatically weaken familial bonds or responsibilities, undermining blanket justifications for treating transnational families differently. The thesis advances a normative argument for reform grounded in a combined model of “family-as-being” and “family-as-doing”, which integrates legal status with the functional and emotional dimensions of caregiving and mutual support. It argues that the ECtHR, applying its doctrine of evolutive interpretation, should adopt a more inclusive, culturally sensitive, and functionally grounded conception of family that reflects contemporary family practices and restores coherence to its Article 8 jurisprudence. Such an approach would strengthen substantive equality in migration cases, particularly by addressing the exclusion of adult-adult kinship ties.