Human Rights, Mobile Humans: A Critical Reading of Mobility and Access to Rights

Abstract

Chapter 1 demonstrated the problem migration poses for security studies and articulated an alternative way of conceptualizing security that is capable of moving beyond the state. Chapter 2 then excavated the process of seeking security and the paradox brought about by the journey to seek security: the journey itself often undermines a migrant’s status as an asylum seeker as designated by the state, even though that individual might have self-identified as an asylum seeker often before embarking upon the journey, or during the journey. In this chapter I turn to the relationship between migration, security and human rights in order to present a deeper understanding of how the ordering of the world places limits on migration, even as migrants simultaneously contest those limits in their actions. Human rights have been considered integral to security, most prominently within the Aberystwyth approach to critical security as emancipation, and within the human security framework. In this chapter I explore the tension that exists between the Aberystwyth school’s focus on emancipation and post-structural iterations of security that have critiqued emancipation as remaining too close to Western liberal ideas. I argue that human rights are linked to extant conceptualizations and practices of security, in particular the ends of securing the sovereign state.