Laktosfri - Human Rights Blog from Scandinavia

A New Year, A New Beginning

2011-12-25T21:09:00.000-08:00

As 2012 approaches, I felt that I should start a new blog. Laktosfri has served as a note-taking tool for my research project on irregular migrants. That project is now complete (available at: .) I now have the willingness to be distracted to take notes about other topics and themes - again.

My research on irregular migrants was related to social rights, more than to other categories of human rights. I'm still very much interested in social rights and elements of Scandinavian style social policy (welfare state) - particularly, how these elements of social policy can be extended to people on/from the wrong side of the planet. When I came back to the Philippines this June, there was a new government which installed a conditional cash transfer scheme to the supposed poorest families. Called the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (PPPP), it was apparently the first such program for redistributing income in the Philippines. Earlier, neighboring Thailand has instituted a system of universal health care, touted as the most cost efficient in the world. When I have the time, I'll poke around what's been said about these state-sponsored welfare programs.

A closely related, theme that I'd like to dig into for next year is "social enterprise". I'm particularly interested in how social enterprises (businesses/NGOs) provide social goods like education, health, etc. in places neglected by states. Where are they doing that? How are they succeeding? And if they are succeeding, are they in effect giving capitalism a new, humane, face - in the same way that Scandinavian social democratic parties by wedding welfare and capitalism re-branded capitalism in a small part of the world? And how is this going to be evaluated in light of the global financial crisis and the larger challenge to so-called liberal democratic capitalism by the rise of Chinese capitalism? Are social enterprises to be welcomed or shunned?

Irregular in the UK: Bibliography for MRC

2011-01-27T12:53:00.001-08:00

List of Materials: Background Information on Undocumented Migrants
(H:\Company Shared Folders\Media & Policy\Undocumented Migrant\Undocumented migrants\Undocumented migrant Research)

1. Migrants Rights Center Ireland, December 2007, “Life in the Shadows: An Exploration of Irregular Migration in Ireland” available at

- Pathways (routes) to irregularity
- Types of State responses (prevention, removal, regularization) and effectiveness
- international law sources and EU policy developments

2. Website of PICUM (platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants)

PICUM, March 2007, “Undocumented Migrants Have Rights: An Overview of the International Human Rights Framework,” Brussels, available at

- human rights of undocumented migrants under international and European law divided by themes (physical and mental integrity; health care; adequate standard of living; fair labor conditions; education; equality before the law)

PICUM, 2008 “Undocumented Children in Europe: Invisible Victims of Immigration Restrictions,” Brussels, available at < http://www.picum.org/sites/default/files/data/Undocumented%20Children%20in%20Europe%20EN.pdf>

- focus on children

3. Website of the Clandestino Research Project (Counting the Uncountable: Data and Trends Across Europe)

Clandestino Research Project, October 2009, “Comparative Policy Brief – Size of Irregular Migration”, available at

- estimates of the size of irregular migration in European countries including the Uk evaluated in terms of reliability

Franck Duvell, 27/3/2009, “Irregular Migration in Northern Europe: Overview and Comparison”, London; COMPAS available in

- including data on UK: irregular migrants as a percentage of the (total and migrant) population; main countries/region of origin based on detention data are Indian Subcontinent, Nigeria/Ghana, and Jamaica (p. 7); paths into irregularity (“most common route is ‘overstaying’ …, working without permission, or working longer hours/in jobs than allowed” “only a small minority enter clandestinely” “many of those [who do enter illegally], in case of being apprehended could nevertheless not be deported but put on the system again…a waiting-for-removal status” (p. 8), also refused asylum-seekers (p.10)); only paths out of irregularity in the UK (amnesty for asylum seeker families; and 14-year stay)
- very brief description of immigration discourse and policy developments in the UK (p. 12-13)

4. Institute for Public Policy Research, April 2006, “Irregular Migration in the UK: An IPPR Fact File”

- Home Office 2005 estimate of the number of irregular migrants in the UK; number of enforcement actions taken from 2000-2004, including nationalities of those who have been detained and deported
- Estimated tax revenues from regularisation
- Estimated cost of deportation
- NSO 2004 statistic on immigrant movement

5. Migrant Work and Migrants’ Rights Network, May 2009, “The Urgent Need for a New Approach”, available at

- pathways to irregularity illustrated through cases
- estimates of number or irregular migrants in the UK
- employment of irregular migrants (cases)
- description of UK’s “managed migration” policy
- description of employer sanctions policy and impact on employers
- regularization in the UK: existing mechanism
- reference to positive evaluation of the 2005 regularisation program in Spain in a resolution by the Council of Europe (p. 22)
- summary of likely economic impact of regularisation in the UK discussed in relation to following themes: taxes and social security, public services; housing; social services; health care; community safety; planning (pp. 24-29)
- in the EU, “68 regularisation programmes have operated from 1973 to 2008” (p.32)
- two aims of the 2005 Spanish regularisation program
- brief description of programmes in Italy (“not regarded as successful”), USA (problematic) and Canada (limited experience)
- history of limited regularisation in the UK (p. 34)

6. Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Resolution 1568 (2007), “Regularisation programmes for irregular migrants”
“10. The Assembly notes in particular the regularisation programme carried out in Spain in 2005 in which over 570 000 persons were regularised, and considers that Europe can learn from this experience. This regularisation programme has been welcomed by irregular migrants, civil society, employers and trade unions, as well as by the majority of politicians in Spain.
“13. The Assembly is aware of the criticism put forward, including in Spain, that regularisation programmes have a pull effect on irregular migration. The Assembly, however, considers that this factor may be exaggerated. If one takes the example of Spain there are a number of other important contributing factors causing irregular migration. These include Spain’s geographical location, its colonial history and linguistic ties, the high level of demand for unskilled labour and limited opportunities for regular migration. There is a further contributing factor which is the difficulty Spain has in returning irregular migrants and the fact that those irregular migrants who are not returned within forty days of being held in detention must be released.”

7. International Center for Migration Policy Development REGINE Project, February 2009, “Regularisations in Europe: Study on practices in the area of regularisation of illegally-staying third-country nationals in the Member States of the European Union,” Vienna: ICMPD, available at

- from 1996-2008, 5.5 million people have applied for regularisation; 3.5 million were regularised
- 4.7 million applied under stand-alone regularisation programs of which 3.2 million were awarded legal status
- Italy, Spain and Greece account for 84% of all known regularisation applications
- “overall impact of regularisation programs is positive”; only “limited evidence of a pull effect” (p. 4)

8. Melanie Gower, Home Affairs Section, 4 January 2010, “Asylum: ‘legacy’ cases,” Standard Note SN/HA/4439, House of Commons Library

- background and data on the legacy cases

9. Philip Cole, “Health, Human Rights and Global Justice,” available at

- on the attempt in December 2007 to remove undocumented migrants from NHS coverage

Domestic Worker's campaign in the UK, RESPECT's lobbying in the EU, and the NL context

2011-01-20T17:26:00.000-08:00

1. General context

picture of Netherlands population and migrant population:

total pop. 16.6 million; about 20% of foreign background (at least one parent is non-Dutch - they are counting until the second generation); 11% of non-western foreign origin (Japan is considered western!) led by Turks, Moroccans, and Surinamese. (Statistics Netherlands)
a telling story: "Just days before he was assassinated, Fortuyn had announced that he would grant amnesty to all rejected asylum seekers and other irregular migrants who were currently in the Netherlands, had been there for at least five years, and spoke Dutch."
number of asylum seekers in 2010 (15,150) was less than half of the 2000 figure

1. Cyrus, Norbert. 2008. "Being Illegal in Europe: Strategies and Policies for Fairer Treatment of Migrant Domestic Workers" in Lutz, Helen

- summarizes EU policy on illegal migration and undeclared work
- suggests alternatives

2. FNV-B and RESPECT
possible contacts:
"If you want more information about the domestic workers and FNV Bondgenoten or if you want to become a member you can contact Marianne Jekkers 06-13933207 m.jekkers@bg.fnv.nl (Nederlands, Español, English) Or Rebecca Pabon 06-51257247 r.pabon@bg.fnv.nl (Español, English)"

story of Coring de los Reyes in

on the history of RESPECT:
Schenken, Helen. 2005. "Domestic slavery" versus "workers rights": political self-mobilization of migrant domestic workers in the European Union, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego, available at

Filipino organizations Waling Waling (Pearce 2000) and Kalayaan in the UK started and became the model of the RESPECT Network: a core (self-help) organization of migrants themselves worked in dialogue with an organization of both migrants and supporters that operated in the public sphere -> in the European level, you have Kalayaan (UK-based) and SOLIDAR (Brussels-based); "multi-level strategies"

documentation of the "successful" British campaign (Ariyadasa 1998) and a critical assessment (Anderson 2004)

in UK, domestic workers were aided by TGWU (Transport and General Workers' Union)

Shenker, Helen. 2003. "RESPECT for all: The Political Self-Organization of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the European Union", Refuge: Canada's periodical on refugees, Vol 21, No 3 (2003): Global Movements for Refugee and Migrant Rights

"Clearly, empowerment, subjectivity, and a rights-based framework are central to the success of domestic migrant workers."

NGO Actors in the Irregular Migrants' Rights Issue-Area

2011-01-18T23:54:00.000-08:00

1. The state and its "agents" (here notice NGOs can be agents of immigration law enforcement)

Lahav, Gallya. 2006. "The Rise of Non-State Actors in Migration Regulation in the United States and Europe: Changing the Gatekeepers or Bringing Back the State?" in Messina, Anthony N. and Gallya Lahav, eds., The Migration Reader: Exploring Politics and Policies. Boulder, Colorado/London:Lynne Reiner Publishers, 290-314.

"How can liberal democracies reconcile efforts to control the movement of people with those that promote free borders, open markers, and liberal standards? Are national actors, as some political analysts predict, 'losing control' over migration? (Sassen 1996; Cornelius, Martin, and Hollifield 1994)"

third-party nonsatate actors in immigration regulation (growing trend toward privatization) pp. 295-303
- transport companies (sanctions)
- employers (sanctions): since 1920s in France
- civil society (sanctions for harboring illegal immigrants) except for Italy and Finland?
- citizens - attempted in France: obligation for sponsors to report when their foreign guests have left
- families (support requirement in the form of judicially enforceable pledges)
in the meantime, courts are being made non-actors

growing trend toward devolution to local level as well

growing trend to move enforcement upward to the international level (international enforcement)
in EU: supra and transnational actors
"In France, where the trend toward complete free movement of persons is critical for European integration, abolition of checks at internal borders have been offset by the proliferation of intergovernmental and supranational actors (the EU "third pillar", the Ad Hoc Immigration Group, TREVI, EUROPOL, the coordinating Rhodes Group, and the Schengen Group) who promote an effective migration control regime. Typically, they make decisions behind closed doors, with little or no formal debate in a public forum. Many intergovernmental cooperation groups do not have to answer to a representative body or international courts. The result is that it is difficult for certain national actors to oversee what international and regional organizations do, and they can be used to circumvent even the most liberal national constraints on migration control (Bunyan and Weber 1995; Guirandon 1997)." (305)

"European regional integration represents a supranational order consisting of strong states committed to pooling sovereignty besed on restrictive migration policies and more effective control. Unlike international regimes for the movement of capital, goods and services, which have sought to promote free trade, international cooperation on migration matters may serve to inhibit migration rather than promote it. Indeed, thus far, cooperation predominantly exist in the prevention of migration (Münz 1996, 14)." (307)

previously, writers have pointed to the tendency for border control to go inwards (the borders are everywhere crisscrossing the state)
there is also the tendency to push the border outwards into the territories of sending countries (jives with Feldmann 2004's "outsourcing") or at least into "transnational space" or "no man's land" like "airports, where intervention by lawyers and human rights associations is almost impossible" (306)

2. The irregular immigrants and their supporters (here NGOs are seen as providing "cover" to irregular migrants)

Engbersen, G. and Broeders, D., 2009. “The State versus the Alien: Immigration Control and Strategies of Irregular Immigrants”, West European Politics, 32(5), 867- 885.

this article is a good complement to the first one. the former emphasizes increased enforcement capacities whereas the latter shows the corresponding responses of irregular migrants, viz., thickening of the foggy social structures.

this is furthermore an article on the Netherlands: NGOs as "foggy social structures"

"In the manifest and secret societies in which irregular immigrants are
embedded there are all kinds of manifestations of what Bommes and Kolb
(2002: 5) have defined as ‘foggy social structures’: ‘Social structures that
emerge from efforts by individuals and organizations to avoid the production
of knowledge about their activities by making them either unobservable or
indeterminable; or, put another way, the practical production of fog.’ These
foggy structures are the product of contradictory economic, social and
juridical forces: economic demands of employers and humanitarian con-
siderations of civil society and state actors on the one hand, and the political-
juridical rejection of irregular immigration by the state on the other (Bosniak
2006; De Genova 2007). A variety of illegal and legal actors are active in the
manufacturing of fog, such as regular employers employing irregular
immigrants through illegitimate temporary work agencies; regular citizens
and religious organisations housing irregular immigrants, irregular immi-
grants using false documents to get medical aid; public service workers using
their discretionary power to give irregular immigrants access to public housing
and education; municipalities supporting failed asylum seekers who do not
want to leave the country; and private households employing irregular
domestic workers. A lot of fog is produced, for different reasons, in order to
make the activities of individuals and the organisations involved unobservable
or indeterminable (Bommes and Kolb Bommes 2002)."

I don't like the term. So instead, I will discuss this in full saying what I don't like about it and what can be teased out from it.

types of support organizations and their activities, esp. in the Netherlands:
http://www.evasp.eu/attachments/061_PICUM,%20Providing%20assistance%20to%20undocumented%20migrants.pdf

3. Transnational actors (both EU and NGOs lobbying in the EU) here seen/discovered as distant from local actors

Guiraudon, Virginie. "Weak Weapons of the Weak?: Transnational Mobilization around Migration in the European Union" in Contentious Europeans

data-rich article!
there are (funding) opportunites within the EU for advocating/promoting migrants' rights but these are disproportionately enjoyed by elite Brussels-based lobbies
there is also an assessment of EU immigration policies as not coherent enough to provide a language to express local movement demands, and Brussels NGOs are unable to affect policy in favor of their supposed local constituencies
local actors (san papiers movement) frame issues in local discourse instead of universal human rights (hmmm..."instead of", but who said they have to be framed in terms of abstract norms?)
Brussels NGOs as Adrian Favell's "gatekeepers"

specific EU body identified: European Council on Refugees and Exiles
See more recent articles: ANDREW GEDDES, "LOBBYING FOR MIGRANT INCLUSION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION"

Gray, Emily and Paul Statham. 2005. "Becoming European? The Transformation of the British Pro-migrant NGO Sector in Response to Europeanization", JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies Volume 43, Issue 4, pp. 877-98.

Now Reading: Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions

2011-01-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

Kabeer, Naila, ed., 2005. Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions. London: Zed Books.

Chap. 12. Ansley, Fran, "Constructing citizenship without a license: the struggle of undocumented immigrants in the USA for livelihoods and recognition," pp. 199-215.

narrative with commentary on a "campaign fought successfully for access to a state-issued driver's license for people who could not produce proof of lawful presence in the USA" conducted by undocumented migrants and their allies in Tennessee from spring of 2001 up to 2003

"Far from focusing overtly on the 'meanings and expressions of citizenship', this effort was initiated by and designed to benefit a population of non-citizens. Moreover, at least in its public aspect and public rhetorical strategies, it seldom mentioned anything remotely like 'rights'." (p. 199)

abolition of slavery was about citizenship
* so also, the legal struggle against racial discriminaton in immigration law "from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 through to the national quota systems that were not finally abolished until 1965" (p. 201) (See also: Joppke, Christian. 200. "Are 'Non-Dicriminatory' Migration Policies Reversible? Evidence from the United States and Australia," Comparative Political Studies 38(1):3-25. => non-discrimnation norm, a key human rights norm ("a core principle of the human rights culture" p. 19), has been applied to great effect in the immigration law field! article also cites Risse, Ropp and Sikkink)

no public transportation system in Tennessee outside the small centers of large cities so that having a car was a basic "necessity for even the simplest acts of daily existence" (p. 203); also, since undocumented migrants could not get driver's licenses, they became a proxy for a citizen/legal resident's ID

who were the actors in the campaign (p. 204-206): a huge (legal) immigrant Latino community (that even Republicans wanted to court); "unexpected quarters" like chiefs of police (and businesses)

strategy used (p. 206): "A final reason I believe we won this struggle for the rights of undocumented workers in Tennessee is that we did not frame the campaign as a struggle for rights at all. Instead, at least in its visible, public face [the author is here implying there was a private, inaccessible space as well = the backstage, where the opposite can be observed], the campaign was framed almost entirely around desires, interests and preferences of US citizens." e.g., highway safety

reflections on the strategy (p. 206)? "The choice of a frame that left immigrants themselves so decidedly in the shadows was not uncontroversial within the campaign, but it represented a clear majority of opinion among whose who developed the strategy." (There is a recognition that the strategy kept undocumented migrants in the shadows, i.e., it is consistent with the over-all strategy of the "clandestine" migrants.) "The decision to frame the issue as one of highway safety grew out of the organizers' conviction that putting immigrants' rights or their welfare at the centre of the campaign (or even out towards its margins, if openly expressed) would be a kiss of death." (At this point, I cannot resist the comparison/contrast with LGBT activism. The "clandestine" migrants are in a kind of closet, and the rights they obtain in this campaign are in effect rights to remain hidden. A confrontational strategy would have required "clandestine" migrants to come out and identify themselves, as did LGBT activists. But even LGBT activists recognize that coming out is a personal decision.)

the human rights activists who led this "non-rights" campaign were performing as middle-men or translators (here you can cite Saugestad's article and footnotes): they decide "how much to highlight the rights and needs of the weak, and how much to appeal to the self-interest of the strong" (p. 207) hence they do not merely act as conveyor belts transporting global norms to local sites, but more like ?

"So my question is not whether rights-based approaches associated with citizenship can be useful ..., but rather when, how, and under what circumstances they are most likely to be useful - or not." (p. 209)

Chap. 3. Stammers, Neil, "The emergence of human rights in the North: Towards historical re-evaluation," 50-68.

cites Hampster-Monk(1992)'s retake on Locke's Two Treatises as having been written not to "justify the successful revolution of 1688...but to incite a future one" looking at Locke's relationship with the radical Diggers' and Levellers' movements
defies liberal and Marxist consensus that "natural rights" (the progenitor of "human rights") was developed to justify "bourgeois" hegemony
"... [A]lternative accounts identify social movements as important agents of transformation [in the English, American and French revolutions]. It was movement activists that generated discourses of natural rights, and that they did so as a way of challenging absolutist power. This is particularly clear in the English and American cases, perhaps less so in the French case. Seen in this terms, claims to natural rights are not simply reducible to an ideological defence of bourgeois property rights. Indeed, these alternative historical accounts suggest (again, particularly in the English and American cases) that it was the most radical currents of activism that developed and deployed the idea of natural rigths. Far from relying on them, the newly emerging propertied classes saw such talk as dangerous and revolutionary - anarchical fallacies, as Bentham neatly summed it up at the time (Waldron 1987)." (p. 59)

"[I]t is in the exclusionary potential of ... the institutionalization of human rights as citizenship rights that the key difficulties are located. In contrast, what may be most positive about the history of struggles for human rights in the North is to be found in claims to universality..." (64-65)

Chap. 2.

"rights are shaped through actual struggles informed by people's own understandings of what they are justly entitled to" (31)

Examples of (Mostly Discourse) Analyses of Irregular Migrants' Rights Issues

2011-01-11T05:08:00.000-08:00

1. Feldmann, Andreas E. and Helena Olea. 2004. "New Formulas, Old Sins: Human Rights Abuses against Migrant Workers, Asylum Seekers, and Refugees in the Americas," in Gordon, Neve, ed., 2004. From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. Oxford, U.K.: Lexington Books, 129-159.

not focused on one issue, but more of a general discussion
The research problem here is slightly different, viz., how do states conceal human rights abuses against irregular migrants? The problem arises from within an understanding of human rights politics proposed by Risse, Ropp and Sikkink but no further engagement with the theory is offered. (From the theory, they derive the point that (host and transit) states have an interest in concealing human rights violations. Risse, et.al.'s own term is "denial" or non-acknowledgment, either of the norm itself or of the fact of violation. Cohen, as pointed out by Shor, has explored the varieties of "denial", including interpretative denial besides outright denial. Is "concealment" different from "denial"?) It seems that the word "conceal" implies that states know what norms have been violated which goes against the fact that states in fact do not acknowledge that human rights norms apply fully to irregular migrants

The authors discuss two specific ways of concealment: (1) through discourse; (2) through out-sourcing to other states.

Interesting discussion of the term "alien" in the law of English-speaking countries; also, "illegal alien".

p. 136 (should I need a quick enumeration of violations)

"A variety of actors take part in infringing on the rights of migrants, including state agents, employers, common criminals, traffickers and smugglers in human beings, and even the general population. Violations include the lack of due process in criminal and immigration proceedings, unfair and substantial working conditions, limited or no access to basic social services (e.g., housing, health and pensions), denial of political rights (e.g., the right to vote in the country of origin and the possibility of obtaining citizenship in the receiving country), harassment and discrimination on the part of authorities and the population, harsh or degrading detention conditions, and the impossibility of using the legal system to seek protection of their rights. ..."
(See also: Taran, Patrick. 2000. "Human Rights of Migrants: Challenges of a New Decade," International Migration 38(6).

p. 137 (should I need a quick evidence of recognition of vulnerability of migrants by UN)

"migrants constitute an especially vulnerable population prone to suffer human rights abuse" (See: UN Social and Economic Council, 1998. Specific Groups and Individuals: Human Rights of Migrants, Report of the Working Group of Inter-Governmental Experts on the Human Rights of Migrants, Report E/CN.4/AC.46/1998/5.)

2. Megan, Hugh. April 1997. "The Discourse of the Illegal Immigration Debate: A Case Study in the Politics of Representation," Discourse & Society, 8 (2): 249-270

analysis of "discourse strategies that fabricated the (irregular) immigrant as the enemy" in the Proposition 187 debate in California in 1994
"self-interest won over human rights"
this is a negative example (just like no. 1): how discourse was used against irregular migrants, i.e., to deny them rights or to exclude them from the coverage of rights

3. Sagunta Vas Dev. 2009. "Accounting for State Approaches to Asylum Seekers in Australia and Malaysia: the Significance of 'National' Identity and 'Exclusive' Citizenship in the Struggle Against 'Irregular' Mobility", Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 16(1):33–60.

yet another negative example, this time from the Asia-Pacific region; identify the specific "campaigns"
again the analysis seems to focus on the discourse of "illegality" and "nationalism"

4. Ansley, Fran, "Constructing citizenship without a license: the struggle of undocumented immigrants in the USA for livelihoods and recognition," pp. 199-215.

not a discourse analysis BUT a positive example I have come accross, i.e., an analysis of how a campaign succeeded; paradoxically, author says campaign succeeded because rights language was avoided, instead, campaigners appealed to citizens' self-interest (note again the term "self interest" which reverberates with Jordan and Duvell's clash of two self interests, and the idea of "human rights" as a "higher morality": focuses on the "persuasive" function of human rights talk)
also refers to the example of the abolition of racial discrimination in US immigration law as long battle that was won apparently permanently in favor of people on the move (labor migrants)
see also: "License to Drive: Pioneering A Compromise to Allow Undocumented Immigrants Access to the Roads"

5. "Emergence of Pro-regularization Movements in Europe"

framing strategies

6. Schwenken, Helen. 2003. "Sangatte-A case study about the political self-organization of refugees and migrants in the European Union" available at

gives an analysis of two "framing strategies"

7. Schenken, Helen. 2003. "Domestic slavery" versus "workers rights": political self-mobilization of migrant domestic workers in the European Union, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego, available at

the research question: "the overall research question is how undocumented migrants and pro-migrant-organizations argue and mobilize, although the EU member states agree widely on combating irregular migration"

firstly, there is the "modern day slavery" discourse which frames abused migrant domestic workers as victims of human trafficking. RESPECT avoided this because the discourse did not fit the reality of the undocumented domestic workers who mostly came through legal means and also because it supported states' interest in curbing irregular migration more than in improving the women's situations in their host countries

secondly, “The European Commission is relatively progressive on the rights of women, more progressive than they are on the rights of migrant workers, and we should try and use that” (B. Anderson, in: SOLIDAR and Kalayaan, 1996: 14)

thirdly, the framing of domestic workers as "workers" or the use of workers' rights framework has advantages: (1) its empowering effect specifically on Filipinos (as opposed to Polish, for example); (2) unions are drawn in.

"the aim is to conceive domestic work as “real work” which was considered more important than struggling for the unrealistic aim of overseas professional employment"

9. McNevin's work on the sans papier movement and the Unpaid Wages Act
10. Guiraudon, Virginie. "Weak Weapons of the Weak?: Transnational Mobilization around Migration in the European Union"

11. Shindo, Reiko. June 2009. "Struggle for citizenship: interaction between political society and civil society at a Kurd refugee protest in Tokyo", Citizenship Studies 13(3): 219–237

not exactly discourse analysis but analysis of a sit-in protest stage in front of the United Nations offices in Tokyo in 2004
what he does here is exemplify a paradox about political representation of irregular migrants (I think someone called this the problem of "alterity") in which non-citizens need citizens to speak to the state
this is a problem that you can be sensitized to coming from post-colonial /subaltern studies perspective
here the author is using Partha Chatterjee

Now Reading: Irregular Migration: Dilemmas of Transnational Mobility by Jordan and Duvell

2010-12-20T15:50:00.000-08:00

Jordan and Duvell's book formulates their research problem in terms of paradoxes to be solved or explained or transcended. A key paradox is that of mobility vs. membership. Mobility here refers to the interest of migrants to move out of their countries of origin and move into their chosen destinations. Rights advocates would elevate this interest into a right. Even Jordan and Duvell acknowledge that (economic) migration is a kind of "voting with the feet" or the "exit option", i.e., an exercise of a kind of a right to choose which kind of life to lead or which kind of polity/society to belong to (i.e., where or how to live, or, for some, whether to live at all). The other side of the dilemma is termed "membership" to draw attention to the fact that host states view themselves as rightly restricting or allowing movement into their borders/societies in order to maximize advantages for its own citizens/members. Irregular migrants then are seen by Jordan and Duvell as dealing individually and collectively with the consequences of the clash of two competing self-interests (that of their own and their host societies) in their own lives. "Dealing" with an irregular status means adopting some kind of strategy.

In the chapter on the role of support organization, Jordan and Duvell refer to perceptible differences in the strategies of Turkish irregular migrants in the UK, on the one hand, and their Brazilian and Polish counterparts as a result of intervention by support organizations. Because the Turkish community are well served by their support organizations, Turkish irregular migrants have more probability of applying for asylum, often engaging immigration authorities in long drawn-out legal battles which have very low chances of succeeding. In contrast, Brazilian and Polish migrants, who have no comparable ethnic/community organizations, adopt a strategy of avoiding contacts with authorities as much as possible, i.e., living in relative clandestinity. They will most probably contact support organizations only when they are already in trouble with the police or immigration authorities.

Quotes

p. 3

Individuals move to seek advantages for themselves; so too states restrict (or allow) movement in order to maximize advantages for their own citizens. [You are dealing here with two kinds of self-interests (rights) = when these clash, how can you say which self-interest is more weighty?] "People who break migration rules (irregular migrants) must therefore be seen, individually and collectively, as acting to deal with the consequences of these struggles on their lives." [Deal with it! I don't like the implication here. But it articulates well the the thinking behind migration law.]

p. 4 "voting with the feet" theme ("exit option")

"Irregular migration is part of the emergence of transnational communities, but transnationalism itself must understood within a broader analysis of how individuals and groups respond to globalisation (xxx) - moving between communities, forming and joining associations, clubs and networks. More generally, it raises the question of whether such movements across jurisdictions and among groups represent an alternative to collective action and political participation within them. xxx What does it tell us about the relative payoffs of democratic activity and for 'voting with the feet' ...?

another rendition of this theme is found in Ansley 2005, 209: "mass migration...best appreciated as a kind of collective civil disobedience"

yet another is Sassen (2003) "counter geographies of globalization" referring to migration as "resistance to hardships" (cited in Lutz, Helma.2008. "Introduction:Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe," in Lutz, H., ed., Migration and Domestic Work: A European Perspective on a Global Theme. Hampshire, England/Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, p.3)

mobility vs. membership

In a globalized world, the state is less willing to make investments in welfare/redistributive policies because citizens can move (bring the benefits of their education, etc.) elsewhere. [True of both developed and developing countries.] This gives people more incentive to move (to take responsibility for their own welfare). [Yes, a case of self-fulfilling prophecy.]

p. 5

"clubs" - mobile people chose communities/countries as if they chose "clubs", going for "the most attractive bundle of collective goods they can afford" [a scathing remark which paints mobile people as disloyal/lacking deep commitment to a community/country]

p. 12 (gist of the argument)

the challenge is how to find a better balance between exit (right to move/voting with feet), voice (democratic participation), and loyalty (community commitment that is the prerequisite of welfare politics) = already the key problem of free movement within the EU

key chapters are: Chaps. 1, 10; read Chap. 6 (role of support organizations)

Chap 6

p. 158

"The problem with the strategy of focusing on arguing for asylum claims, and providing for those needs not met by public services, was that these agencies [support organization] have been caught up in a downward spiral of deteriorating standards, with ever more basic, crisis or destitution services. Instead of being able to advocate for better, more generous standards for their clientele, they have found themselves on the defensive, playing for time in appeal cases, or providing the bare minimum for people facing homelessness and hunger."

p. 167 (on the unenviable situation of asylum seekers in the UK)

"In many ways, a dispassionate observer looking at our data might advise a migrant wishing to enter the UK for any reason to avoid the status of asylum seeker if this was in any way feasible for him or her and opt instead for complete illegality. Inspite of the vast amount of advice, assistance and representation being provided for asylum applicants, and considerable sums of public spending (very little of which reached them as individuals), their situation is extremely unenviable."

Note: a Swedish innovation in Labor Migration policy

2010-08-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

An "objective" and expeditious way of ascertaining existence of need for migrant labor has been devised in Sweden. The discretionary power of government regulators has been curbed. They no longer need to make any determination whether hiring a foreign worker is "economically necessary" as is the case in many countries. This means avoidance of arbitrariness and less red tape. Employers need only advertise the job for ten days within the EU and show that there has been no takers.

Excerpt from http://www.focus-migration.de/Sweden.6245.0.html?&L=1

"On 15 December 2008, following several years of preparation and negotiation, new regulations came into force in Sweden concerning the immigration of workers from non-EU states. Most importantly, labour immigration is now almost fully dependant on the needs of Swedish employers; the controlling powers of government agencies are severely restricted and the labour market is open to workers of all skill levels. The Swedish Public Employment Service no longer carries out checks to establish whether the immigration of foreign workers is economically necessary. If an employer has a vacancy available but is unable to find a suitable candidate inside Sweden, they are first obliged to advertise the vacancy publicly through the Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen). This agency also sees to the publication of the advertisement in the EU job mobility portal EURES. If once again there is no response, the employer may, according to the new rules, advertise for an applicant from any country in the world. All the employer has to do is prove to the migration authorities that the vacancy has, in fact, been advertised for a period of at least ten days throughout the EU. In this way the principle of giving priority to Swedish job-seekers and EU citizens is respected."

Relevance from labor migrants and irregular migrants: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdagensarena.se%2Freportage%2Fdokument-5-”arbetskraftsinvandring”%2F

"The new rules meant that the old system where applications for work permits, first tested in the domestic labor market finally abolished. The idea was that employers themselves better able to assess whether they need to recruit foreign workers or not. Neither authorities or trade unions, who previously served as a referral body, would no longer be part of the process. Employers were given full responsibility.

For individuals the opportunity to migrate and work in Sweden and the firms' ability to recruit staff abroad the new rules are a clear improvement. Although asylum seekers who have been denied may, if they have jobs, get work permits. After four years, is also the possibility of permanent residence."

But it can also generate new irregular migrants who "run away" from exploitative contracts.

Implementation of "deregulation of labor migration"/"flexible labor migration policy" criticized

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Faintiawomankampanjen.wordpress.com%2Fnyheter%2F

Situation of berry pickers from Thailand

http://dagensarena.se/reportage/dokument-5-”arbetskraftsinvandring”/

Renata Salecl: Lacanian psychoanalysis and human rights

2010-06-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a very engaging article on clitoridectomy ("Cut in the body: From clitoridectomy to body art" in Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey, eds., Thinking Through the Skin, Routledge: London and New York, 2001), the practices of female circumcision, excision and infibulation among "traditional" Africans much maligned from the perspective of human rights, which discusses the issue from the lens of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. It is an essay by Renata Salecl, which my further googling revealed to be a prolific scholar in law and psychoanalysis, two fields you hardly see mentioned in the same line, from the same country and university as Marxist intellectual superstar Zlavoj Zizek (that's University of Ljubljana in Slovenia).

Why Lacanian psychoanalysis? How can it this body of theory be applied to analyze practical human rights issues?

The main concept that she uses in this essay is that of the symbolic order or the big Other．What she does is to use this concept of the symbolic order to distinguish our late modern or post-modern (in Slovenia, post-socialist) times from pre-modern and modern/Enlightened ages past. Our post-modern society is characterized by the total disbelief in the symbolic order. (The pre-modern world is governed by the symbolic order; in the modern world, the influence of the symbolic order is still felt through the law, but "freedom" can be obtained through the distancing/rejection of this law.) But it's not that people have recognized that the symbolic order is a fiction; rather, the symbolic order is experienced as a farce, and people have a desperate desire for this fiction to cease to be fiction. The result is a return to the pre-modern rituals of initiation such as female genital cutting. But this time around, people "chose" to be cut; it is their "permanent" answer to the absence of the big Other.

Salelc is pretty much saying that present-day female genital cutting (she is specifically referring to the practice by African immigrants in London where female genital cutting is illegal by statute) is not pre-modern or "backward"; on the contrary, it is post-modern. Hence, the human rights argument against female genital cutting is speaking past the post-modern African immigrants who are engaged in it.

It is not that Salecl rejects the human rights argument against female genital cutting. She says categorically that she is for human rights, and criticizes pre-modern views of women (only cut women are honorable). So what is she saying here and what does her choice of theory really contribute to the discussion?

(let me answer that later)

The following interview of Renata Salecl gives the Slovenian context which explains somehow the choice of theory :

From www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/radioeye/foreign4.doc

"Spoils of Freedom
Renata Salecl

I .

The political history that frames my work comes from my engagements with Slovenian politics and psychoanalytical movements. In my earliest writings, I was very much influenced by the work of Michel Foucault. However, there were many questions that pertain to the problem of the subject’s identification with power to which I didn't find sufficient answer in Foucault. I found Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis much more useful for understanding the logic of subjectivity in contemporary societies, especially in totalitarian regimes. In Slovenia, Lacanian psychoanalytic movements during the time of communism were strongly associated with the oppositional parties. At that time there were two main fronts among the oppositional intellectuals. On the one hand, there were mostly literary writers who were very much concerned with the issue of Slovene national identity. And on the other hand, there were intellectuals who were trying to build the opposition movement on non-nationalist grounds. Theorists who were influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis were among this second group of intellectuals. Lacanian theory helped us to understand why the communist system functioned for so long, although no one believed in it (especially not the top bureaucrats). Psychoanalysis also provided the framework for building up oppositional ideology which was not nationalist, but tried to incorporate the ideas of the new social movements.

Now I am supporting a party which is called the Liberal Democratic Party. This party came out of new social movements like Greenpeace, feminism and so on. It has become a strong party. I wouldn’t say the best party that you could find, but pragmatically in this situation, it is the one that I feel is worth supporting. The Party promotes issues that are linked with the socialist movement, and it has now turned into a contemporary centre left party.

...But the sad thing about the political situation here is the strong division between right and centre left. Both the political groups promote populist ideas of the nation and justice. For example, you take from the rich to give to the poor. Find people who are guilty for everything and then get rid of them, and you will solve all the problems. They all use this very elementary ideology. And, on the other side, you have a kind of coalition of more leftist parties who are not united but who are struggling to define their leftist position. But the left is not very welcome in the post-socialist scene.
*

In post-socialist states the hegemonic struggle for power incorporates many different discourses, and right-wing or populist discourses are very successful nowadays in reinterpreting liberal or leftist ideas. So the right wing in Slovenia incorporate and use liberal ideas which people can identify with, like rights, the freedom to choose, and so on. I would say that they do not differ that much from any western country. But their success, I think, in contrast to liberal or left-wing parties, is that they are able to touch the issues which people passionately identify with. Left wing or liberal discourses are very negligent on this point. For example, the question of maternity leave is a very touchy issue and the left wing don’t address it much in their political discussion. But the right wing bring out this dilemma of women struggling on two fronts: being mothers and working women. They appeal to both traditional family values and populist feminist thinking... So the right's success lies in their raising the issues. I think that on the ideological front they are much wiser than left-wing parties, who basically forget about these ‘passionate’ issues and think more about the economy and so on.
*

II
Fantasy, Hate, Nation

... If you take the problem of national identity from a Lacanian perspective, basically there lies an unsymbolisable kernel that you cannot define exactly, but you also can’t simply get rid of. So the nation is that point around which the social symbolic structure organises itself. Here, I would say, that the nation as a national community would be a fiction. But the problem of the nation touches more on the real in the Lacanian sense. This is not simply something that is pre-symbolic but, as I understand it, is the leftover of any kind of symbolisation; that is, a point around which the symbolic structures itself but where the structure also fails. So the national community would be a fantasy structure which tries to somehow deal with this unsymbolisable element of the nation. And this structures, I would say, a story, a fantasy, something that we are telling ourselves or something the community is telling itself, to make a coherent identity. The nation is an ungraspable element that you always need to deal with. Even if you take an anti-nationalist strategy as your political strategy, you are nonetheless dealing in some way with this ungraspable element of the nation — you are not simply annihilating it as a problem. From the left-wing or the liberal position you have to deal with this issue. I am not anti-national. But I think that liberal or left-wing politics has to incorporate the problem of national identity in their discourse if they want to be successful in any way. In Slovenia, our point was that you cannot escape the destiny to be Slovene. We were saying you can be proud to be Slovene but it doesn’t mean that you are against other nations and so on. So our party strategy was also to incorporate the idea of national identity in the political discourse, but not in the kind of aggressive anti-nation, anti-others rhetoric.
*
In some recent work I have dealt with the problem of hate speech and racism. I was trying to incorporate psychoanalytic work into this domain. I was primarily asking myself: what are the intentions of a certain percentage of people who use violent, racist or nationalist words against members of other races or nations? What is their intention? What is it the person tries to succeed in? The answer is not that the person simply tries to get rid of a member of another nation or race (because, as you remember from Nazism, the most anti-Semitic feelings were in the Austrian provinces where there were almost no Jews, so it doesn’t matter if the ‘others’ are really there or not). I argue that in psychoanalytic thinking what becomes crucial is that the person who attacks another tries to annihilate the identity of the other, and also tries to get confirmation for their own identity. So, what the person searches for in the other is an addressee who will give back a form of confirmation to the attacker’s identity. I think at that moment the attacker touches the real in the other, and the attacker tries to annihilate the identity of the other. This gives them a certainty and confirmation of their identity. Basically, my problem in the dilemma of this violent speech is how to attend to this logic, and how to think about this hostility in regards to an attack.

From the position of psychoanalysis, what Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis points out is that you are always determined by social (symbolic) structures. And yes you are quoting from the language that you are born into, but nonetheless there is a certain responsibility that the subject cannot escape. And this responsibility pertains to the enjoyment of a person...

In the racist attack, the question is: what is the enjoyment of the subject who utters violent speech? Even when the words that they utter are a quotation from past discourses, what is the enjoyment in re-uttering them? My point is that in re-uttering them, the subject does not simply quote from the existing historical discourse but re-establishes this discourse in a new way.
*
III
Dilemmas of Difference and Post-modern Racism

In The Spoils of Freedom I was trying to come to terms with the dilemma of cultural differences and universalism as understood in contemporary theory. My problem here is how the West is now engaging in a new form of racism; that is, how other nations are seen as ultimately ‘other’. They are seen as so ‘other’ that they do not understand the same notions, understandings and so on. The debates lately about human rights have been in this direction. Should the West insist that non-western countries understand human rights in the same way as we do?; that is the common question. Or should we really oppose other nations when they engage in certain acts, like female circumcision and so on? Unfortunately, I think we use this example too many times, and that raises other questions as to why we do it. But, around this issue, it is very easy to talk about the dilemma of liberals and left-wing intellectuals. They would believe in human rights and would oppose these kind of practices. But there is a problem when we know that, for example, Nigerian women in France who were denied circumcision claimed that they could not get married, and that their lives were ruined. So how do we behave when a national culture engages in practices which from the western perspective are perceived as cruel? It is easy to say that other cultures are just different and we oppose them, but there is nothing we can do to convince them not to engage in these practices which are part of their identity. I think there is a dilemma that liberals don’t want to face, which is that you always engage in some kind of violence when you take a stand.

.... Liberals try to have a comfortable escape in having the idea that they provide people with information, while they don’t want to see the information as already a form of violence. We cannot escape this dilemma of choosing one form of violence against another. In terms of female circumcision, I would definitely choose the violence of imposing universal human rights, but this should not be regarded as a good deed, since it imposes a certain kind of violence on the others.
*
...The West should not limit their understanding of human rights and equality to their own ideals. But they should understand that the fight for the meaning of what is universal is going on throughout the world, and that different parts of the world are engaging with it in particular ways. Recently I came across some debates about Vietnam and Vietnamese intellectuals. The opposition intellectuals (to the government) were struck by Westerners saying: ‘oh let’s not force the Vietnamese government to accept international human rights, because they as an Asian culture have a different understanding of human rights’. But Vietnamese intellectuals were saying: ‘please allow us at least the use of this weapon — the universal human rights, because this is what is left for us in our battle against the government; don’t become multiculturalist on this domain’.
My fear is that western intellectuals can very easily exclude others’ claim to ‘rights’ in their multiculturalist perspective. I think that this is a very comfortable position, which I perceive as extremely dangerous because the universal logic of capitalism is playing with this multiculturalism. Multi-capitalist corporations are now using the language of the left very successfully. When, for example, big corporations came to Eastern Europe we were hoping that they would bring the western standard of equal opportunity, sexual equality at the workplace and so on. But they immediately became defenders of cultural differences. They claimed: ‘oh we should not impose this because their culture is different' and we should respect the other. But I would say capitalism is using multiculturalist ideology for its own purposes. What you are seeing with these changes is that, basically, capitalist corporations become entities that are not controlled by anyone; not even western governments control them any more. So what is crucial is to observe how capitalist corporations now treat their own countries. For example, western countries are now colonies. It is no longer that the corporations are colonising the East or Third World, they are colonising the West itself. For example, in Germany big corporations like Siemens are not controlled any more by the financial institutions in their country. They can decide to move their production to another country to increase their profits, and usually they threaten their own government by saying: ‘OK if you are not going to obey us we will move out and you will lose jobs and so on’. So capitalist logic has changed significantly; you don’t have capitalism controlled by a nation state, but it is the company that is controlling the nation state. This is done precisely by being transnational, and by using multiculturalist ideology."

'Spoils of Freedom' is a modified extract from the book, Foreign Dialogues — Memories, Translations, Conversations by Mary Zournazi, published by Pluto Press, Sydney, 1998

Irregular Migrants' Struggle for Human Rights: some more random notes

2010-03-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

1. Community Unionism in Japan

"With the high economic growth of the 1960s and 1970s, however, Japanese trade union members became the members of a 'new labour aristocracy' which accepted the need for 'false part-time workers' to guarantee its own stability of employment. This has been the main reason why the unionization of part-time workers has not made much progress. Of course, there has also been a reluctance on the part of the part-time workers themselves to join unions, but more important has been the negative attitude of the full-time employees. One can therefore understand why there has been no interest at all among the enterprise unions in recruiting foreign workers who are hired on the same short-term basis as part-time Japanese employees. Neither can such interest be expected to develop in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, some Japanese unions are open to accepting foreign workers as members. These are the new-style "community unions" which begun to appear in the trade union movement in 1983 and has since spread rapidly across the country. At the end of 1987 they numbered more than thirty. Their organizing strength is still slight and, as in the case of the Edogawa Union and Union Higourou, membership is measured in the hundreds rather than in the thousands.
"The number of part-time workers has risen sharply and this has been one important factor which has caused a drop in union membership year by year. Both Souhyou and Rengou had therefore begun to emphasize the importance more active recruiting campaigns. If, on the other hand, the community union movement continues to grow, then the character of the trade union movement as a whole will change and may very well become more amenable to accepting foreign workers. ..." (p. 263)

(Nimura Kazuo, "The Trade Union Response to Migrant Workers," in Glenn D. Hook and Michael Weiner, eds., 1992/2001 The Internationalization of Japan, London: Sheffield Centre of Japanese Studies/Routledge Series)

Unions in US, UK construction industry

"Historically, there have been craft unions that developed more open organizing approaches, foreshadowing the inclusive strategies of industrial unionism. See, e.g., Dorothy Sue Cobble, Lost Ways of Organizing: Reviving the AFL’s Direct Affiliate
Strategy, 36 INDUS. REL. 278, 279–80 (1997). Furthermore, in the past few decades, craft unions such as the building trades have found that their exclusivity has been their downfall in the face of an influx of nonunion construction firms, often staffed by new immigrants. The resulting loss of market share and decline in union strength in the construction industry has led many in the building trades to rethink the classic craft union model and to develop programs to draw in immigrants and others historically excluded from their ranks. See, e.g., Bruce Nissen, The Role of Labor Education in Transforming a Union Toward Organizing Immigrants: A Case Study, 27 LAB. STUD. J. 109, 109–13 (2002)." (p. 515)

"With the influx of immigrants into the industry over the past few decades, building trades unions’ control over construction jobs has been severely eroded. The unions’ first reaction was to seek to expel the immigrants. Of late, however, the construction unions who organize the less elite members of the construction workforce—including the bricklayers, laborers, and carpenters—have begun to invite them within the circle. Nissen, supra note 34 (providing a case study of the role of labor
education in efforts by the South Florida Regional Council of Carpenters to organize new immigrant workers); Miriam Jordan, Rebuilding Plan: Carpenters Union Courts Immigrants to Increase Clout— Undocumented Workers See Risk of Firings, Fewer Jobs, WALL ST. J., Dec. 15, 2005, at A1 (discussing union efforts to court immigrants); Nate Schweber, Worked Over? Union Organizers Say Immigrants Get Cheated, HERALD NEWS (Passaic County, N.J.), Sept. 6, 2004, at A1 (recounting outreach efforts
by the Laborers’ International Union of North America to reach out to immigrants on construction sites in New Jersey); Nicole Andrea Silverman, Deserving of Decent Work: The Complications of Organizing Irregular Workers Without Legal Rights (Oxford Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, Working Paper No. 21, 2005) (discussing a case study of efforts by the New England Regional Council of Carpenters to organize Latino immigrant workers)." (p. 517)

2. The Theory of Community Unions

"So, internationally, the situation in the late 1990s is that industrial unions have declining appeal and effectiveness, while enterprise unions have been an instrument for promoting functional flexibility and employment security for core workers. ... One can dimly see what is needed - institutions that can resist pressures of co-option, promote dynamic efficiency in production and have a redistributive effect beyond the confines of an individual firm. Are there any germs of hope?
"...In terms of flexible labour relations, what is needed is a movement that brings together bodies representing local groups of employed and those at the margins of the labour force to bargain over distributional, security and production issues.
"What might be called community unions or citizenship associations could be the most effective way forward if a strategy of ditributive justice is to be pursued. For this traditional unions must recognize that their long-term representative capacity will depend on their appeal to flexiworkers and those on the labour force margins. ... The agenda of community unions would differ from that of enterprise unions, giving higher priority for social income issues, including environmental protection and share entitlement to social benefits by those in regular and non-regular forms of employment, and from industrial unions, in that they would give less emphasis on the money wage relative to other components of the social income." (p. 391)

(Guy Standing, 1999, Global Labor Flexibility: seeking redistributive justice, New York: St. Martins Press)

3. European countries that deny that they have an obligation to respect human rights of irregular migrant: Sweden, Austria and Germany

"Another issue is whether irregular immigrants have social and human rights, whether these must be recognised wherever a person is and whatever his or her status is and whether states have a moral duty toward undocumented migrants. Most countries because they accept their international obligations under the various human rights conventions affirm this question and permit at least limited access to health care, primary education for children, and access to the legal system. Three countries as I have critically analysed this elsewhere deny these rights, Sweden, Austria and Germany." (pp. 12-13)

Countries where unions increasingly represent irregular migrant workers: US, Portugal, UK and Germany (p. 10)

(Frank Duvell, 2006, "Illegal Immigration in Europe: Patterns, Causes and Consequences")

Irregular Migrants and Human Rights: Random Notes

2010-02-22T14:22:00.000-08:00

Notes taken while doing my self-collected readings:

1. Rejecting the term "illegal migrant"; questioning immigration law: No one is illegal (Cohen 2003). Only acts, not people, can be criminalized or declared or made illegal. And irregular migrants are not necessarily criminals either. The suggestion that migrants themselves are illegal eerily resonates with the process of legal dehumanization (Bauman 1989) that has historically been applied to the Jews and culminated in the Holocaust.

"Illegal migration" too doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. Ultimately, what is illegal in "illegal migration" is the fact that it violates immigration law or regulation (pertaining to visa conditions, for example). The status (or importance in the system of laws) of immigration law, however, differs from country to country. More importantly, immigration law may sometimes run afoul of international human rights law, in which case, the illegality of some forms of "illegal migration" can even be questioned in reference to legal norms of presumably greater importance. (Question: What is the relationship between migration law and international human rights law? Answering this question in itself can generate a legal history of human rights activism against immigration law in the fom of a survey of human rights jurisprudence in which the validity of immigration law or regulation was challenged. I am guessing Steve Cohen must have gone to ECHR a number of times.) Advocates have also used human rights norms discursively to deligitimize certain immigration law and regulations. For example, migrants' rights advocates in Canada have shown how immigration regulations restricting migrant live-in caregivers to change their employers have resulted in women being trapped in a contractual relationship with abusive employers to the detriment of their well-being. (find source) This argument can be generalized to argue against blanket immigration regulations restricting the freedom to chose employers. (has been done in Japan re. trainees - find source) Women's rights advocates have also pointed out that allowing women married to high-skilled migrants to legally reside in the host country but preventing them from working there has the effect of making or keeping women dependent on their husbands. (look for that Korean author re. H1B visa in the US) Immigration law and regulations can therefore have human rights implications from migrants that are too often unexamined. Because it is highly problematic to simply accept immigration law as the having the final say on the legality or illegality of migration, "illegal migration" is a highly problematic term.

1.1. the right to mobility and the "heirarchy of mobility" (Bauman, 2000 cited in Duvell, 2008): Mobility or the freedom to cross borders, reside and find a living in a country other than one's own is a resource that is currently allocated through the overlapping migration laws and policies of states. While citizens of Western countries typically can move around and settle pretty much anywhere they fancy, citizens of the global South are typically denied this right. (Does this not establish a system of discrimination based on national citizenship which is incompatible with human rights?)

2. The term "irregular migrant" is the preferred term of researchers who adopt an explicit human rights perspective (both from the liberal "open borders"/anti-deportation activist variety, as well as by international organizations like UNHCR, IOM, Council of Europe, etc.). "Migrant workers in an irregular situation" is the expression adopted in the CMW. (Basok (2008) points out three strands of "migration without borders" discourse engaged in by academics and activists alike.)

It is also the preferred term of migration scholars who are dissatisfied with the lack of descriptive fit between the dichotomy "legal/illegal migration" and the much more complex reality of migrants who do not have authorization to leave (their country of origin), enter (another country), or reside or work in their host country. Duvell (2008, p. 488) explains this very well by simply listing down all the possible concatenations of legal/illegal exit, entry, residence and work. For example, not all "illegal migrants" illegally entered, are illegally residing and illegally working in the host country; some may have legally entered but residing illegally in the host country (e.g., visa overstayer) and may or may not be working; some may be legally residing in the host country but are not allowed to work or are allowed to work only up to a certain maximum number of hours per week and are working despite or beyond such restriction; some may have legally entered and are authorized to work but only for a particular employer or line of work and violate this restriction; some may not have entered the host country at all but were born there to parents who illegally entered the country; and some may not have had permission to leave their country of origin (i.e., exit visas). It is much better to call the lack of one or more form of authorization (to exit, enter, reside or work) as an irregularity, and view these migrants as falling into a kind of continuum of irregularity, rather than to draw a black and white "legal/illegal" dichotomy and lump all irregular migrants under the category "illegal".

3. If irregular migrants have human rights, what are they? How are they recognized recognized by states, or how will they be recognized by states, or will they?

3.1. O'Byrne: human rights discourse (in the singular) as a social reality (as opposed to religious or philosophical idea) only took off with the UDHR, and depended on the state-system (Freeman: human rights will have to be implemented within the existing Westphalian system of states). Risse, Ropp and Sikkink (1999): Human rights norms are diffused into the state system through a process of socialization of states. Basok's concept of counter-hegemonic human rights discourses: migrant's rights discourses are counter-hegemonic human rights discourses which challenge or even undermine the Westphalian system of states as well as the political economy which depends on the exploitation of migrant labor; therefore, their recognition by states through socialization are more problematic. Civil society's role is key. (To what extent are the human rights norms that have been adopted by states any less "transformational" than migrants' rights norms? In any case, migrants rights (CMW version) accommodates the nation-state, does it not?)

3.2. civil society interventions in support of migrants. In Japan, migrant support NGOs are typically divided between women NGOs and labor unions. (Roberts in Douglas and Roberts (2003)) Labor unions have represented irregular workers against abusive employers, though it can be imagined that this is a very atypical scenario as irregular workers who openly challenge abusive employers attract attention to themselves. Women NGOs have also sheltered and helped irregular migrant women access welfare benefits and legal recourse against abusive partners or human traffickers.

Labor unions and grassroots campaigning organizations intervening in support of irregular migrants in the US (and Canada, but not unions) are reported in Basok (2009). AFL-CIO reversed its long-standing opposition to irregular migrants in the labor force in February 2000 and the CIO executive council is calling for whistleblower protections for irregular workers who complain about abusive work conditions. (Basok, 2009, p. 193) In the US, with union support, irregular migrant workers have even marched in the capital to demand regularization (Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride of 2003 reported in Moberg (2003)) Also, in France. (McNevin, 2006)

It can be imagined that NGO support for irregular migrants are influenced by the legal and policy environment, i.e., how much space the laws allows for such maneuvering (e.g., to what extent the firewall principle is adopted), whether they are able to frame the situation as human trafficking rather than labor migration, etc. Gibney (2000) suggested that European NGOs that assist or advocate for refugees and immigrants may have an interest in silencing irregular migrants in that involvement with them “might tarnish the causes of their main constituency”. (p. 2) This may well be because the space for legitimately espousing for irregular migrants' welfare has shrunk as a result of the present legal and policy environment. Perhaps the social environment (e.g., an aggressively anti-migrant media) too is to blame. But civil society does not only react to its environment, it is also a catalyst for legal and social change, or at least, should be. (So perhaps we need to conceptualize civil society's role in defining, developing, and promoting respect for migrants' human rights.)

(A satisfactory conceptualization of will have to be able to account for the discourse on "urban citizenship" or "local citizenship" which creates spaces of political belonging for the irregular migrants even as the nation-state system increasingly excludes them from the body polity.) "Don't Ask Don't Tell" campaign in Toronto used as a model the municipal policy of 28 US cities. (Basok, 2008)

3.1. humanitarianism or human rights? Civil society's concern for irregular migrants is not always framed in terms of human rights; sometimes it is framed in terms of humanitarianism or compassion. It may be because some migrant support NGOs do not consider irregular migrants as having legal rights.

But the fact that irregular migrants have basic human rights is quite clear. Proceeding from analyses of different legal sources, Katsuko Terazawa (in Douglas and Roberts, 2003) (japanese law) and Ryszard Cholewinski (2006) and the Council of Europe (2006) (EU and international law) point to the legal rights that irregular migrants are entitled to. Joseph Carens (2008) makes a broader normative analysis which assumes the state's prerogative to control migration but nevertheless arrives at a similar enumeration of rights for irregular migrants as well as the firewall principle necessary to safeguard these rights.

(To what extent do NGOs feel constrained by the fact that migrant-receiving countries have not signed up to the Convention on the Rights of Migrants Workers and their Families (CMW)? Are they even aware of it?)

1. Some terms used to refer to Filipino irregular migrants:

"TNT" - a term used in the Philippines to refer to Filipinos in other countries (most commonly in the US) who constantly hide ("tago ng tago") from authorities to avoid deportation;

"bilog" - Filipino term for visa overstayers ("O" for overstaying) in Japan, commonly entertainers whose visas were not renewed, but also visitors who stayed on to work;

TO BE CONTINUED

Tanya Basok (2009), Counter-Hegemonic Human Rights Discourses and Migrants Rights Activism in the US and Canada, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol. 50 (2): pp. 183-205.

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Human rights of irregular migrants, May 4, 2006.

Ryszard Cholewinski, Irregular migrants: access to minimum social rights (2006)

Steve Cohen (2003) No one is illegal: asylum and immigration control, past and present, Stoke and Trent: Trentham Books.

Micheal Douglas and Glenda Roberts (2003), Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society (University of Hawaii Press)

Franck Düvell (2008), "Clandestine Migration in Europe", Social Science Information vol 47 (4): pp. 479-497.

Gibney, M.J. (2000) Outside of the Protection of the Law: the Situation of Irregular Migrants in Europe, Working Paper 6. http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/PDFs/workingpaper6.pdf. Oxford: Refugee Studies Center, University of Oxford.

McNevin, A. (2006) Political Belonging in a Neoliberal Era: the Struggle of the Sans Papiers, Citizenship Studies, 10(2), pp. 135-151.
David Moberg (2003) The Road to Citizenship: Immigrants and unions get on the same bus, In These Times, 23 September, available at http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/624/

The Dignity of the "Post-Human"?: Online Freedom

2009-11-30T13:40:00.000-08:00

"There are no human rights in the internet."

I don't know if that was a very well thought-out statement but I heard it said by Atty. Matthias Klang this afternoon in our class on Human Rights and Technology. What could he have possibly meant by that?

The Dignity of the "Post-Human"?

2009-11-29T13:57:00.000-08:00

I finally was able to get hold of a definition of the term "post-human" that has intrigued me ever since my wife showed me some of her readings on "post-humanism" in her Gender Studies course. Here it is:

"Posthuman

"The idea that either (i) the human species is at an evolutionary dead-end, and must incorporate technologies in order to evolve to the 'next level'; or (ii) that we have long ceased to be human, because of our increasingly intimate relationship with nonhumans, such as technological artifacts. ..." (David Bell, Cyberculture Theorists: Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway (2007: New York, Routledge), p. 24)

It is the second sense of the term that is developed in Donna Haraway's argument that we are cyborgs:

"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are all cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics."

Bold theoretical pronouncements indeed. We are not only cyborgs figuratively speaking, because the literalness of our intimate relationship to machines, including to computers and cellphones, cannot be denied.

Now, if we are post-human or cyborgs, how are we to make sense of human rights?

One approach is to conceive of human dignity in relation to our relationship/s with machines or technology.

First of all, there is an existing human rights norm that specifically deal with technology, viz., Art. 15(1)(b) of the ICESCR which speaks of the right of everyone "to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications". This is no doubt the legal anchor for the movement to eliminate the "digital divide" between those for whom the internet and digital technology are an ubiquitous presence and those who are simply cut off from such goods.

However, access to technology and bridging the digital divide surely do not exhaust all that is problematic about our relationship to technology. Even when technology is accessible, you can still have an oppressive (dehumanizing?) relationship to it. Two examples come to mind:

1 - work invading our private time because the boss can reach us through the cellphone, or because work can be e-mailed;

2 - call center agents working in the graveyard shift because the internet has integrated relatively cheap labor in a different time zone to the economies of post-industrial countries.

Come to think of it, this is again the "cog in the machine" scenario that Marx has already railed against (so the "post-human" is not so new after all). Except now, the machines are more mobile and more ubiquitous (that is, for those in the right side of the digital divide).

But perhaps we have asked the wrong question. Perhaps it is not a matter of asking how we are humanized or dehumanized by technology, which assumes that we can distinguish between human and machine. If we are post-human, then will human dignity still matter? Will we have to throw away human rights as so much humanist anachronism? By celebrating the arrival of the post-human, are we not in fact giving up on the ideal of the truly human, i.e., people actually being treated as human beings, i.e., with dignity?

Human Rights Foreign Policy: Cuba and the Right to Health

2009-11-26T10:42:00.000-08:00

This is just a qoute from the back cover (a blurb) of the book: John M. Kirk and H. Michael Erisman, Cuban Medical Internationalism (2009: New York, Palgrave MacMillan), to remind me to read this book later when I have more time. I was reminded about Widi's Cuban doctor friend whom she met in Indonesia while on a mission to assist victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Before Widi told me about her doctor friend, I haven't heard about Cuban medical internationalism.

"While public health is important for revolutionary Cuba, providing medical service to the developing world is also a priority: some 40,000 medical staff are engaged abroad; the largest medical school in the world (ELAM) has an enrollment of over 8,000 students from the Third World; and since 2004, over 1.5 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have had their eyesight restored at no cost to them. How has this small nation of 11.3 million people managed this? And what are its motives? This book, the result of four years of research in Cuba, provides an updated analysis of this extraordinary record."

"...In sum, Cuba is credited with saving more lives in the developing world than all the G-8 countries together. ..."

And a short quote from the concluding Chapter:

"[Cuba's] multifaceted contribution undoubtedly reaches more people than the work of all of the G-8 countries together, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Nobel Peace Prize recepient Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF). Each one of these Cuban initiatives puts the industrialized world to shame and, sadly, the extraordinary value of the Cuban contribution to humanity has been badly ignred by Western media. ..." (p. 170)

Opening Scene: My Initial Excuse for this Blog's Title

2009-11-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

Every morning I wake up around 6 a.m., if not earlier, to the sound of my infant daughter sitting up beside me. She doesn't really make a sound as she sits up, so maybe, it's instinct. Father's instinct. Though asleep, I just know that she has risen, and so must I, or else she might crawl out of the bed and fall. My baby rises for her first bottle about the same time everyday no matter what time she slept the night before. No alarm clock needed.

Carrying my baby in one arm, I open the fridge with the other and then reach for the carton of milk. The label reads "Laktosfri" on one side and "Laktosefri" on another. It's Swedish and Danish, respectively, for lactosefree, and pronounced about the same as the English word.

Now I pour about 5 ounces into her bottle and pop this inside the microwave oven for about a minute just so it is not cold. Soon, she is feeding herself, and I take advantage of this moment to change her diaper. Then, it occurs to me, "Laktosfri" may be a good title for this blog.

You may be asking by now: So what has lactosefree milk got to do with human rights in Scandinavia?

Nothing intrinsically, except that for me it is a symbol of my personal situation as a full-time single dad and also of Sweden and of the Swedish day care system which takes care of my daughter while I go to Gothenburg University to study Human Rights. I associate it with Sweden and Swedish day care because in here, although my daughter appears to be the only one out of the 21 members of her class to be allergic to milk protein, they nevertheless feed her non-allergenic food suited for her. It helps that lactosefree milk is so widely available in Sweden, alongside lactosefree butter and lactosefree yogurt. And then, the day care itself is the realization of a very important human right, to be found in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to have access to facilities that allow women (and single dads) to balance home and work lives.

As you can probably guess, this a rather personal blog and here I share some notes about some half-thought notions that I currently deal with as a full-time single dad and student of Human Rights at Gothenburg University.