Biography

Nicole de Moor

State Secretary for Asylum and Migration

Who is Nicole de Moor?

Nicole de Moor was born in 1984 in Sint-Gillis-Waas. She studied law at Ghent University from 2002 to 2007 and subsequently obtained a Master of Laws in International and European Law, option Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam. Her research activities were situated in the field of international, European, and national asylum and migration law. In other words, her studies proved to be the perfect cradle in which her deep-rooted interest in asylum and migration policy could germinate.

After she had acquired a fundamental basic knowledge during her studies, she started working as a legal advisor at the Flemish Minorities Centre, now the Integration Agency, from 2008 to 2009, where she worked for ethnic-cultural minority groups.

However, her curiosity about the underlying motives of global migration flows kept itching, so from 2009 to 2014, as a PhD student at the Department of Public International Law at Ghent University, she immersed herself in researching international migration as a possible adaptation strategy for communities affected by environmental degradation. Meanwhile, by successfully completing her dissertation, she has been entitled to call herself a Doctor of Laws since 2014.

After completing her doctoral research, she worked at the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (2013-2014). Almost simultaneously, she also put her first footsteps on the political stage as a migration specialist in the cabinets of cd&v ministers Kris Peeters, Nathalie Muylle and Koen Geens. On top of that, in 2020, fueled by her acquired knowledge and experience, she became the chief of cabinet of former State Secretary for Asylum and Migration, Sammy Mahdi, who eventually passed the torch to her. On 28 June 2022, she herself took the oath as State Secretary for Asylum and Migration.

In short, in a relatively short period of time, Nicole de Moor developed from a passionate law student into the pre-eminent migration specialist of the Wetstraat.