ABSTRACT
It is an honour to be associated with this remarkable work – a poignant archive of the various ways of the continual reproduction of human rightlessness of ‘migrants’ – for the most part sans-papiers or ‘undocumented aliens’. If the despair and distress about the failure of human rights law and jurisprudence is writ large here, this is partially overcome as well by messages of hope emanating from global social action challenging the somnolence of sovereign power. The ‘hope’ is articulated here, for the most part, in an endless production of human rights discursivity. This means several things. When international human rights law norms for the migrant human are lacking, seek to proliferate these. When at hand, ensure a best possible promigrant interpretation at all registers of sovereign power (legislation, adjudication, implementation and enforcement). When this does not work, deploy theory as a resource for critique that deeply decimates the State folkways (of border control) and folklores (concerning a profound peril ‘posed’ by the non-European migrant other, or the new ‘untouchables’ of Europe).1 And in the process put to question our ways of thinking about and doing human rights.2 In this way of reading, the
1 N Harris, The New Untouchables, 1995, London: IB Tauris; and see for a different perspective, F Franchino, ‘Perspectives on European Immigration Policies’, European Union Politics, 2009, Vol 10, 403. See further as regards the Stockholm initiative, S Carrera and M Merlino, ‘Undocumented Immigrants and the Rights in the EU: Addressing the Gap Between Social Science Research and Policy-Making in the Stockholm Programme?’, 2009, Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies.
