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7 - Migrant Rights as Existential Commitments

from Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2019

Moritz Baumgärtel
Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Summary

This chapter proposes that a reconceptualization of human rights is needed for migrant rights to become a reality in Europe. It begins with a brief presentation of scholarship that, based on societal arguments related to dependency, identity and costs, has drawn attention to the inherently uncertain character of migrant rights. As answers to these objections can be found neither in approaches that solidify human rights as law nor in those that equate it to social norm, this chapter draws on recent works that have conceptualised human rights as existential commitments, adding to their phenomenological account a perspective of human rights as self-conception held by persons and societies. Depending on their identity, human rights can be more or can be less demanding. The final section of this chapter refocuses on the legal sphere and, more specifically, on the principle of vulnerability. The argument is that vulnerability conceived as a ‘socially induced’ condition could be used to reconnect legal and existential human rights commitments that exist in Europe, thus offering the European courts a tool to promote migrant rights in line with the expectations held by society.
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Chapter
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Demanding Rights
Europe's Supranational Courts and the Dilemma of Migrant Vulnerability
, pp. 137 - 153
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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