Showing papers on "Statelessness published in 2007"

Who is the Citizen's Other? Considering the Heft of Citizenship

Abstract: The objective of this Article is to integrate legal and social conceptions of citizenship as they materialize at the geographic, political, and social border crossings that accompany transnational mobility. Rather than pose the question 'who is the citizen?', I ask 'who is the citizen's Other?', partly as a means of surfacing what we mean by citizenship by thinking about who we designate as its alterity. Against the current of most contemporary scholarship, I commend resurrecting the concept of statelessness as an antipodal reference point for citizenship. My intuition is that a version of statelessness still dwells in the substratum of much citizenship discourse, and that rendering a plausible account of it under contemporary conditions may prove helpful in linking conversations about legal and social citizenship. I supplement the conventional understanding of the stateless person (apatride) as one who lacks any citizenship in a state by also designating as stateless one who possesses citizenship but lacks a state. My analysis draws on Hannah Arendt's famous exegesis on the relationship between the apatride, the refugee, and the condition of rightlessness, as well as contemporary refugee jurisprudence. I demonstrate how subject positions commonly identified as the citizen's Other, including the refugee, the alien and the second-class citizen, are better understood as nested within a larger matrix where the apatride represents the ultimate negation of citizenship. I then introduce the notion of the heft of citizenship as a method of assessing how legal citizenship and social citizenship interact to position an array of subjects between these stylized poles of citizenship and statelessness.

Who Is the Citizen's Other? Considering the Heft of Citizenship

Abstract: The objective of this Article is to integrate legal and social conceptions of citizenship as they materialize at the geographic, political, and social border crossings that accompany transnational mobility. Rather than pose the question "who is the citizen?," I ask "who is the citizen’s Other?," partly as a means of surfacing what we mean by citizenship by thinking about who we designate as its alterity. Against the current of most contemporary scholarship, I commend resurrecting the concept of statelessness as an antipodal reference point for citizenship. My intuition is that a version of statelessness still dwells in the substratum of much citizenship discourse, and that rendering a plausible account of it under contemporary conditions may prove helpful in linking conversations about legal and social citizenship. I supplement the conventional understanding of the stateless person (apatride) as one who lacks any citizenship in a state by also designating as stateless one who possesses citizenship but lacks a state. My analysis draws on Hannah Arendt’s famous exegesis on the relationship between the apatride, the refugee, and the condition of rightlessness, as well as contemporary refugee jurisprudence. I demonstrate how subject positions commonly identified as the citizen’s Other, including the refugee, the alien and the second-class citizen, are better understood as nested within a larger matrix where the apatride represents the ultimate negation of citizenship. I then introduce the notion of the "heft" of citizenship as a method of assessing how legal citizenship and social citizenship interact to position an array of subjects between these stylized poles of citizenship and statelessness.

The Statelessness of the World's Children

Abstract: At the heart of the discourse and practice of children’s rights lie basic assumptions about the relationship between the young and the nation-state On one hand, the lives of children are considered as if they are nested within the boundaries of a single nation On the other hand, the state — as signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) — is positioned as the primary guarantor of the rights and well-being of young people A naturalised understanding about the relationship of young people to nation-states is evidenced in the annual UNICEF report, The State of the World’s Children, which accounts for the situation of children globally by reference to indicators of health, education and so on, organised by country (UNICEF, 2006) At the same time, this report can also be read as a commentary on the state of the world’s nation-states, in which the well-being of children serves as an indicator of national progress This illustrates the two-way relationship in which children are critical — at least in symbolic terms — to states, just as those same states are seen to play a central role in the lives of the young

Democratic Journalism and “Statelessness”

Abstract: The starting premise of this article is that democratic journalism, no matter its specifics, is not viable as long as states are unable to perform key functions that cannot be delegated to other actors. For journalism, an intrusive state is as problematic as a tenuous, chaotic, and absent state. This point has not been sufficiently recognized and investigated in the literature on the current expansion and consolidation of a democratic press worldwide. “Statelessness,” a condition particularly affecting large swaths of the global South, deters the prospects for the affirmation of journalism that anchors democratic life. State absence facilitates anti-press violence, undermines the economic basis for news organizations, and weakens the rule of law. It remains unclear whether the press, an institution that has historically played key roles in building and renovating national identities and mediating civic engagement, can also make significant contributions to strengthening effective and democratic states. Th...

International migration law : developing paradigms and key challenges

Abstract: State Sovereignty and Responsibility.- Anti-Terrorism Laws and the Legal Framework for International Migration.- The Legal Protection of Stranded Migrants.- Detention of Irregular Migrants and Asylum Seekers.- Consular Protection and Assistance.- Multiple Nationality: The Practice of Germany and The Netherlands.- Trade and Labour Migration.- Gats Mode 4 and the Mobility of Labour.- Global Remittances and the Law: A Review of Regional Trends and Regulatory Issues.- Migration and Free Trade Agreements: Lessons from NAFTA and Perspectives for CAFTA-DR.- Forced Migration.- Changing Paradigms in Refugee Law.- Addressing Secondary Refugee Movements.- Responding to the Challenge of Internal Forced Migration: The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.- Claims for Restitution and Compensation.- Human Rights of Specific Migrant Groups.- The Protection of Non-Citizens in International Human Rights Law.- Migrant Women.- The Rights of Migrant Workers.- Trafficking of Human Beings and their Human Rights in the Migration Context.- An Evaluation of International Instruments That Address the Condition of Statelessness: a Case Study of Estonia and Latvia.- Free Movement Regimes and Other Regional Developments.- Free Movement of EU Nationals and Union Citizenship.- Legislative Harmonization in European Immigration Policy.- Moving Freely on the African Continent: the Experiences of ECOWAS and SADC with Free Movement Protocols.- Free Movement Regimes in South America: The Experience of the Mercosur and the Andean Community.- Free Movement of Persons in the Caribbean Community.- Continuing and Emerging Issues of Significance.- Cooperation Mechanisms.- Biometrics and International Migration.- Enhancing Cooperation on Border Controls in the European Union.- Conclusion.- International Legal Norms on Migration: Substance without Architecture.

Against birthright privilege: redefining citizenship as property

Abstract: While the topic of immigration attracts considerable attention, it is by means of birthright, and not naturalization, that approximately 97 percent of the global population acquires political membership. In distributing membership and entitlement, or what Michael Walzer calls “the most important good” within our communities, modern polities have long adhered to a formal, legal connection between entitlement to membership and circumstances of birth . This adherence automatically bequeaths to some a world replete with opportunity and condemns others to a life with little hope. There is no doubt that membership status in any given state or region – with its particular level of wealth, degree of stability, and human rights record – is, even in the current age of increasing globalization and privatization, a crucial factor in the determination of life chances. Political and legal theory has, however, had remarkably little to say about the system of distributive injustice attributable to current birthright citizenship laws. This lacuna is especially surprising in light of recent and vibrant citizenship debates concerning topics closely related to the injustice in question – for example, the claims of minority groups, the narratives of collective-identity formation, and the ethics of political boundaries. These debates engage with what can be referred to as the “identity-bonding” dimension of citizenship. What remains conspicuously absent from these discussions, however, is any analysis of what we might call the “opportunity-enhancing” implications of the entrenched norm and legal practice associated with automatically allocating political membership according to kinship and heredity principles.

The Nationality of Denationalized Palestinians

Abstract: One in three refugees in the world today is Palestinian. The majority of these refugees have no nationality because they were denationalised by Israel's Nationality Law in 1952 after they had fled or been expelled from their homeland in 1948. Israel has refused to allow the majority Palestinian refugees, being displaced in 1948, the right to return to their homes despite the passage of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (III). Israel has also refused to allow the majority of Palestinians displaced in 1967 the right to return to their homes despite appeals from the International Committee of the Red Cross and despite calls from the UN Security Council. Since then Israel has manipulated the laws of occupation by transferring its civilian population into the territory it occupies whilst subjecting the indigenous Palestinian population to military law. In 2003, Israel enacted racially discriminatory legislation in the form of the Nationality and Entrance into Israel Law which the U.N. Human Rights Committee has specifically requested Israel revoke. This legislation restricts nationality and residency rights for Arabs resident in the Occupied Palestinian Territories whilst specifically excluding Jewish settlers from its application. These are some examples of the lengths to which the State of Israel is prepared to go - in order to maintain a Jewish majority in the country - even if they violate international law. This paper will examine whether the forced displacement and denationalization of Palestine's original non-Jewish inhabitants - including an examination of Israel's Nationality and Entrance into Israel Law (2003) - are compatible with the basic principles of international law today.

Mental Health Professionals as Pawns in Oppressive Practices: A Case Example concerning Psychologists' Involvement in the Denial of Education Rights to Roma/Gypsy Children

Abstract: This article examines a 2006 European Court of Human Rights judgment concerning educational discrimination against Roma children in the Czech Republic and the involvement of educational psychologists in the case. The court held the school to be the proper final arbiter on the question of the best interests of the child regarding educational placement. Based largely on culturally biased psychological testing results, the Roma children in question were declared mentally handicapped by educational psychologists. On that basis, they were placed in a segregated school for the intellectually disabled where the curriculum was quite deficient. Despite statistical evidence of the overrepresentation of Roma children in such segregated Czech schools, and of widespread discrimination against Roma in schools and in the larger society, the court rejected the claim that the children's right to an education had been violated. The implication for psychologists and educators internationally, to avoid becoming pawns contributing to an oppressive human rights situation, is discussed. Keywords: children's rights; education rights; human rights; psychological practitioner; mental health practitioner Nationality is considered to be a very fundamental human right since in many respects it establishes the individual's "right to have rights" (Youth Advocate Program International, 2002). The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC , 1989) sets out the right to a nationality in Article 7 as a fundamental human right. To date, 191 countries have ratified the convention and there is some hope the United States will do so as well, now that minors have been ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court to be ineligible for the death penalty. Article 7 of the CRC requires states to be proactive in implementing the right to nationality under their domestic law and in compliance with their international legal obligations. Having acquired a nationality is most often presumed to be the converse of being stateless. However, the reality is that certain marginalized groups of children are de facto stateless though they may be citizens, immigrants or refugees, or just habitual residents (as were their ancestors) of the state in question. The rights of such children correlated to nationality are for the most part, in practice, only theoretical. The Roma children of Europe constitute such a vulnerable group. One area in which they are markedly discriminated against is in regard to their right to a complete basic education of good quality. The denial of the right to education for the children of an oppressed minority is a key mechanism in the perpetuation of that group's powerlessness. Having acquired a nationality is of no effect when one's humanity is so discounted as to undermine one's fundamental human rights. The notion of statelessness in international law has yet to be broadened so as to incorporate those largely unable to access the benefits of their national identity-the de facto stateless such as the Roma. At present, under international law, the definition of statelessness is restricted to those "not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law " ("Convention relating," 1954) (those having no legal bond with the state; persons referred to as being " de jure stateless"). It has been noted that "stateless individuals generally do not benefit from the protection and assistance of governments, aid agencies, and the United Nations, despite its mandate over stateless persons" (Refugees International, 2005). The same also applies to de facto stateless individuals such as the Roma. We will consider here a case example of the human rights situation of Roma children who are de facto stateless, focusing on the widespread violation of these children's education rights. Their plight is examined through a recent case from the European Court of Human Rights concerning the Czech Republic. This case serves to highlight the use of segregationist approaches to special education, which may serve to oppress, and the role of psychologists as pawns in that process. …

Peace Material: Giorgio Agamben and the Israeli Palestinian Peace Accords

Abstract: In Means Without Ends: Notes on Politics, Giorgio Agamben recounts the story of 400 Palestinian men banished by Israel to the snowy mountains of Lebanon, which he calls a 'no-man's-land'. 'These men', he argues, certainly constitute, according to Hannah Arendt's suggestion, 'the vanguard of their people'. But that is not necessarily or not merely in the sense that they might form the originary nucleus of a future national state, or in the sense that they might solve the Palestinian question in a way just as insufficient as the way in which Israel has solved the Jewish question. Rather, the no-man's-land in which they are refugees has already started from this very moment to act back onto the territory of the state of Israel by perforating it and altering it in such a way that the image of that snowy mountain has become more internal to it than any other region of Eretz Israel. Only in a world in which the spaces of states have been thus perforated and topologically deformed and in which the citizen has been able to recognize the refugee that he or she is--only in such a world is the political survival of humankind today thinkable. (1) Agamben's story of the banished and stateless Palestinian men is perhaps the most direct reference he makes to a contemporary case in outlining the radical edge of the refugee non-citizen, and by implication of an anti-sovereign, or perhaps post-sovereign politics. The attempt is overly dramatic and sketchy at best. But the story brings into focus the kind of framework where a non-citizen ruptures the material and symbolic spaces of the nation, challenging the status quo of the nation-state. The spatial removal of the non-citizen, the material excision of the non-citizen, 'act[s] back', threatening the political coherence of the nation-state by perforating its spatiality. What is thrown outside rears its threatening head inside, contorting the nation-state's image of itself, performing what Agamben has called the unhinging of the 'trinity of state-nation-territory'. Agamben's insights into statelessness and the status of refugees derive from his work on homo sacer, the merely human or bare life. In outlining the biopolitical structure of exception that captures bare life, Agamben proceeds from the relationship between the figure of the citizen (central to modern statist politics) and the material condition of being human which is overwritten by that of citizenship. It is that ambiguous and detrimental relationship between materiality and citizenship that I want to explore, specifically in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Accords at a time when the Palestinian quest for statehood finally took form in international politics. I want to understand the political possibilities for the figure of the non-citizen within the framework provided by Agamben, the framework where bare life is the vanishing presupposition of the citizen and where the indistinction between inside and outside, physical life and political life, gestures not only to the extreme dangers of the present but also to the political possibilities of the future. In addition, I want to understand the political alternatives available to and provided by the Israeli Palestinian conflict, alternatives that articulate a challenge to the discourse of the nation-state, a discourse which has so far proven impossible and deadly within the territorial and imaginative spatiality of Palestine/Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has conflicting accounts and histories. It is characterised by some as the Israeli struggle for existence against destructive and overwhelming Arab hostility of which the Palestinians are representative. The Palestinians view the conflict as that of a rightful struggle against foreign occupiers with Israel as a colonial settler state. Many who advocate for peace between the two groups see the conflict as one between two 'rights', or one of 'right vs right' and call among both groups to 'coexist'. …

From Beirut to Brussels: Universal Jurisdiction, Statelessness and the Sabra and Chatila Massacres

Abstract: This paper re-examines the massacres which took place in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila twenty-five years ago, by analysing the findings of the five separate commissions of inquiry established to look into those events: Namely, The Kahan Commission of Inquiry, the Jermanos Commission of Inquiry, the MacBride Commission of Inquiry, the Oslo Inquiry and the International People's Tribunal at Tokyo. The author points out that none of these commissions were judicial bodies and that no one has ever been prosecuted for the crimes committed in those camps in September 1982 in which approximately 800 - 3,500 unarmed men, women and children were killed. He argues that despite the misgiving scholars have on the nature and the extent of the principle of universal jurisdiction in international law, it is an appropriate basis of jurisdiction for the Palestinian people who are precluded from prescribing or enforcing jurisdiction due to their lack of statehood. This is because the Palestinians cannot at present use the courts in Israel or in the Lebanon to prosecute those persons responsible for the Sabra and Chatila massacres. Consequently, jurisdiction for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Lebanon cannot be invoked on the basis of the territorial, national, protective or passive personality principles of jurisdiction.

A Prevenção à Apatridia no Contexto Internacional

Abstract: This article proposes to evaluate the question of statelessness, specially its prevention on the International Law field. To reach this objective the articles is divided n some areas, such as the introduction, explaining the main problems derived from statelessness, the concepts of statelessness and imperative rules of International Law and International Documents analysis. Finally, we approach the case of Brazilians born outside Brazil and due absurd circumstances of Brazilian Constitution, became statelessness.