1st Edition

Are Human Rights for Migrants? Critical Reflections on the Status of Irregular Migrants in Europe and the United States

Edited By Marie-Benedicte Dembour, Tobias Kelly Copyright 2011
264 Pages
by Routledge

264 Pages
by Routledge

264 Pages
by Routledge

Human rights seemingly offer universal protection. However, irregular migrants have, at best, only problematic access to human rights. Whether understood as an ethical injunction or legally codified norm, the promised protection of human rights seems to break down when it comes to the lived experience of irregular migrants. This book therefore asks three key questions of great practical and... Read more

Introduction, Marie-Bénédicte Dembour and Tobias Kelly; Part I: Taking it as a given: The affirmation of the optimist; 1. The Recognition of the Rights of Migrants within the UN Human Rights System: the First SixtyYears, Stefanie Grant; 2. Irregular Migration and Frontier Deaths: Acknowledging a Right to Identity, Stefanie Grant; Part II: Deliberating: The efforts of those who work the system; 3. The Constitutional Status of Irregular Migrants: Testing the Boundaries of Human Rights Protection in Spain and the United States, Cristina Rodriguez and Ruth Rubio Marin; 4. The Human Rights of Migrants as Legal tools and Discursive Principles for Re-Framing Individual Justice in Modern Constitutionalism, Galina Cornelisse; Part III: Protesting: The outrage of the witness; 5. ‘Not our problem’: Why the conditions of irregular migrants in detention are not considered a human rights issue in Malta, Daniela De Bono; 6. The Calaisis area: transit zone or dead-end?, Marie-Bénédicte Dembour and Marie Martin; Part IV: Keeping one’s distance: The puzzlement of the sceptic; 7. Human Rights and Immigration Detention in the UK, Mary Bosworth; 8. The Legalisation of Human Rights and the Protection of Torture Survivors: Asylum, Evidence and Disbelief, Tobias Kelly; 9. The Rights of the Person: a Constitutional Agenda Drawn from the US Experience, Linda Bosniak; 10. Afterword, Upendra Baxi

Biography

Marie-Bénédicte Dembour is Professor of Law and Anthropology at the University of Sussex. She has written extensively on human rights, culture and migration. She is the author of the acclaimed monograph ‘Who Believes in Human Rights: Reflections on the European Convention’ (CUP 2006).

Tobias Kelly currently teaches Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of ‘Law Violence and Sovereignty Amongst West Bank Palestinians’ (CUP, 2006) and ‘This Side of Silence: Human rights, Torture and the Recognition of Cruelty’ (UPenn Press, forthcoming).