When humans become migrants

Study of the European Court of Human Rights with an Inter-American counterpoint

Bibliographic Data

ID20009212
AuthorsMarie-Bénédicte Dembour (0000-0002-3270-4067, Professor of Law and Anthropology, University of Brighton, corresponding author)
Year2015
Pages575
Publication date2015-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueWhen Humans Become Migrants (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199667833.001.0001
OpenAlexW931210546
Open LibraryOL33299270M
ISBN9780199667833
LanguageEN
Citations received30

The treatment of migrants is one of the most challenging issues that human rights, as a political philosophy, faces today. It has increasingly become a contentious issue for many governments and international organizations around the world. This book examines the way in which two institutions tasked with ensuring the protection of human rights—the European Court of Human Rights and InterAmerican Court of Human Rights—treat claims lodged by migrants. It combines legal, sociological, and historical analysis to show that the two courts were the product of different backgrounds, which led to differing attitudes towards migrants in their founding texts, and that these differences were reinforced in their developing case law. The book assesses the case law of both courts in detail to argue that they approach migrant cases from fundamentally different perspectives. It asserts that the European Court of Human Rights treats migrants first as aliens, and then, but only as a second step in its reasoning, as human beings. By contrast, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights approaches migrants first as human beings, and secondly as foreigners (if they are). The book argues therefore that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights takes a fundamentally more human rights-driven approach to this issue. The book shows how these trends formed at the courts, and assesses whether their approaches have changed over time. It also assesses in detail the issue of the detention of irregular migrants. Ultimately it analyses whether the divergence in the case law of the two courts is likely to continue, or whether they could potentially adopt a more unified practice

Common law · Counterpoint · Human rights · International human rights law · Political science · Sociology · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Emigration and immigration law

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