Pulling Human Rights Back In? Local Authorities, International Law and the Reception of Undocumented Migrants

Description

The category of the ‘undocumented’ migrant is usually seen as the quintessential non-status under international law, offering a lot of discretion in terms of state action and sanctioning while providing very few, if any practically accessible rights for migrants. At the same time, certain local authorities have struggled to justify more pragmatic responses vis-à-vis their national authorities when dealing especially with the reception of ‘irregular’ immigrants. This paper explores a recent trend that potentially holds one key to both conundrums: the invocation of international human rights law, in defence of irregular migrants, by local au-thorities. More specifically, it will be argued that city authorities’ engagement of human rights law forces international institutions, including judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, to apply and develop international norms in this area. Within this specific story of multilevel governance, state authorities find themselves increasingly under pressure to live up to legal and moral standards that they had previously successfully avoided. Two examples will be used to undergird the argument. The first concerns active support by the Dutch city of Utrecht of a legal case concerning emergency social assistance for undocumented migrants before the European Committee of Social Rights. The second example concerns San Francisco as an important sanctuary city in the US but also a place with a long history of localization of international human rights law. The paper closes with a critical reflection on the potential trajectories that this trend might take. Based on emergent theories regarding the difficulties that underlie the rights experience of vulnerable migrants, it will be argued that the sway of this development will be influenced by whether municipalities are motivated by voluntarism or a genuine sense of duty.

Period	9 Jun 2018
Event title	Law and Society Association annual meeting
Event type	Conference
Location	Toronto, CanadaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International