Skip to main content

The Right to Have Rights as a Right to Enter: Addressing a Lacuna in the International Refugee Protection Regime

Human Rights Review volume 18, pages 417–437 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

This paper draws upon Hannah Arendt's idea of the 'right to have rights' to critique the current protection gap faced by refugees today. While refugees are protected from refoulement once they make it to the jurisdiction or territory of a state, they face an ever-increasing array of non-entrée policies designed to stymie access to state territory. Without being able to enter a state capable of securing their claims to safety and dignity, refugees cannot achieve the rights which ought to be afforded to them under international law. Drawing upon both legal theory and political philosophy, this paper argues that refugees today, just as the stateless in Arendt’s time, must be afforded the ‘right to have rights’, understood as a right to enter state territory.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Notes

  1. For example, see the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 2(1): “Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognised in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

References

Cases

  • Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy, (2012). Application no. 27765/09, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 23 February 2012.

  • Sale v Haitian Centers Council Inc., 509 US 155 (1993).

  • X and X v. État belge, (2017) C-638/16 PPU, European Union: Court of Justice of the European Union, 7 March 2017.

International Treaties

  • Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, opened for signature 28 July 1951, 189 UNTS 150 (entered into force 22 April 1954).

  • Draft Convention on Territorial Asylum. (1974) UN Doc A/AC.96/508/Add.1

  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (1948) GA Res 217A(III), UN GAOR, 3rd sess, 183rd plen mtg, UN Doc A/810 (10 December 1948).

Articles and Other Documents

  • Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Amery, Jean. 1980. At the Minds Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amnesty International. Refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/refugees-asylum-seekers-and-migrants/.

  • Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arendt, Hannah. 1978. The Life of the Mind. San Diego, New York and London: Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Arendt, Hannah. 2007. The Jewish Writings. New York: Schocken Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ayre, Keeya-Lee. 2016. Europe, don’t copy Australia. Forced Migration Review; Oxford: 77.

  • Balibar, Étienne. 1994. Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benhabib, Seyla. 1996. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

  • Benjamin, Andrew. 2010. Place, Commonality and Judgment: Continental Philosophy and the Ancient Greeks. London and New York: Continuum Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, Richard J. 2005. Hannah Arendt on the Stateless. Parallax 11: 46–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/1353464052000321092.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bigo, Didier. 2002. Security and immigration: toward a critique of the governmentality of unease. Alternatives 27: 63–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohman, Andrea, and Mikael Hjerm. 2016. In the wake of radical right electoral success: a cross-country comparative study of anti-immigration attitudes over time. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42: 1729–1747. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1131607.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brathwaite, Amy. 2005. The Future of Migration Control?: Exploring the Issue of Extra-territorial Migrant Reception Centres: the Case of Italy and Libya. Aalborg University.

  • Canovan, Margaret. 1995. Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carens, Joseph H. 2013. The ethics of immigration. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowger, Sela, Jessica Bolter, and Sarah Pierce. 2017. The First 100 Days: Summary of Major Immigration Actions Taken by the Trump Administration. Migration Policy Institute.

  • Czaika, M., and M. Hobolth. 2016. Do restrictive asylum and visa policies increase irregular migration into Europe? European Union Politics: 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116516633299.

  • Dastyari, Azadeh. 2015. United States migrant interdiction and the detention of refugees in Guantánamo Bay. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, Alice. 2005. Human Rights, Refugees, and The Right “To Enjoy” Asylum. International Journal of Refugee Law 17: 293–330. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/eei011.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas. 2011. Access to asylum: international refugee law and the globalisation of migration control. Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas, and Hans Gammeltoft-Hansen. 2008. The Right to Seek – Revisited. On the UN Human Rights Declaration Article 14 and Access to Asylum Procedures in the EU. European Journal of Migration and Law 10: 439–459. https://doi.org/10.1163/157181608X380219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas, and James C. Hathaway. 2014. Non-Refoulement in a World of Cooperative Deterrence. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 53: 235–284.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas, and Nikolas F. Tan. 2017. The End of the Deterrence Paradigm? Future Directions for Global Refugee Policy. Journal on Migration and Human Security 5: 28–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gehrsitz, Markus, Ungerer, Martin. 2017. Jobs, Crime, and Votes: A Short-run Evaluation of the Refugee Crisis in Germany. IZA—Institute of Labor Economics.

  • Gibney, Matthew J. 2004. The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees. Cambridge University Press.

  • Giuffré, Mariagiulia. 2012. State Responsibility Beyond Borders: What Legal Basis for Italy’s Push-backs to Libya? International Journal of Refugee Law 24: 692–734. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/ees050.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gleeson, Madeline. 2016. Offshore: Behind the Wire on Manus and Nauru. NewSouth Publishing.

  • Gogou, Kondylia. The EU-Turkey deal: Europe’s year of shame. Amnesty International.

  • Goodwin-Gill, Guy S., and Jane McAdam. 2007. The refugee in international law. 3rd ed. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gündoğdu, Ayten. 2015. Rightlessness in an age of rights: Hannah Arendt and the contemporary struggles of migrants. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, Randall. 2017. Constrained by its roots: how the origins of the global asylum system limit contemporary protection. Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hathaway, James C. 2005. The rights of refugees under international law. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heuser, Stefan. 2008. Is There a Right to Have Rights? The Case of the Right of Asylum. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11: 3–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Asher Lazarus. 2017. The Borders Beyond the Border: Australia’s Extraterritorial Migration Controls. Refugee Survey Quarterly 36(3): 48-80. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdx008.

  • Hyndman, Jennifer, and Alison Mountz. 2008. Another Brick in the Wall? Neo-Refoulement and the Externalization of Asylum by Australia and Europe. Government and Opposition 43: 249–269. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00251.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ingram, James D. 2008. What Is a “Right to Have Rights”? Three Images of the Politics of Human Rights. American Political Science Review 102: 401–416. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055408080386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • International Organization for Migration. 2015. Irregular Migrant, Refugee Arrivals in Europe Top One Million in 2015: IOM. International Organization for Migration. December 22.

  • Jones, Reece. 2016a. Borders and Walls: Do Barriers Deter Unauthorized Migration? Migration Information Source. October 4.

  • Jones, Reece. 2016b. Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move. London New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kesby, Alison. 2012. The Right to Have Rights: Citizenship, Humanity, and International Law. Oxford University Press.

  • Kneebone, Susan. 2009. Refugees, Asylum Seekers and the Rule of Law: Comparative Perspectives. Cambridge University Press.

  • Lamey, Andy. 2012. A liberal theory of asylum. Politics, Philosophy & Economics 11: 235–257. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X11416775.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larking, Emma. 2012. Human Rights, the Right to Have Rights, and Life Beyond the Pale of the Law. Australian Journal of Human Rights 18: 57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larking, Emma. 2014. Refugees and the myth of human rights: life outside the pale of the law. Surrey; Burlington: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lauterpacht, Elihu, and Daniel Bethlehem. 2003. The scope and content of the principle of non-refoulement: Opinion. In Refugee protection in international law: UNHCR’s global consultations on international protection, ed. Erika Feller, Volker Türk, and Frances Nicholson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Menke, Christoph. 2007. The “Aporias of Human Rights” and the “One Human Right”: Regarding the Coherence of Hannah Arendt’s Argument. Special issue: Hannah Arendt's Centenary: Political and Philosophical Perspectives, Part I (FALL 2007), Social Research 74(3):739–762.

  • Moreno-Lax, Violeta. 2008. Must EU borders have doors for refugees? On the compatibility of schengen visas and carriers’ sanctions with EU member states’ obligations to provide international protection to refugees. European Journal of Migration and Law 10: 315–364. https://doi.org/10.1163/157181608X338180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moreno-Lax, Violeta. 2017. Asylum Visas as an Obligation under EU Law: Case PPU C-638/16 X, X v État belge (Part II).

  • Muldoon, Paul. 2012. The injustice of territoriality. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15: 631–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nethery, Amy, and Carly Gordyn. 2014. Australia–Indonesia cooperation on asylum-seekers: a case of ‘incentivised policy transfer. Australian Journal of International Affairs 68: 177–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2013.841122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nethery, Amy, Brynna Rafferty-Brown, and Savitri Taylor. 2013. Exporting Detention: Australia-funded Immigration Detention in Indonesia. Journal of Refugee Studies 26: 88–109. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fes027.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ramji-Nogales, Jaya. 2014. The Right to Have Rights: Undocumented Migrants and State Protection. U. Kan. L. Rev. 63: 1045.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schloenhardt, Andreas, and Colin Craig. 2015. ‘Turning Back the Boats’: Australia’s Interdiction of Irregular Migrants at Sea. International Journal of Refugee Law 27: 536–572. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/eev045.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sciurba, Alessandra, and Furri, Filippo. 2017. Human Rights Beyond Humanitarianism: the Radical Challenge to the Right of Asylum in the Mediterranean Zone. Antipode: 1–20.

  • Türk, Volker, and Rebecca Dowd. 2014. Protection Gaps. In The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, ed. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.013.0024.

  • United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 1994. The Haitian Interdiction Case 1993 Brief amicus curiae. International Journal of Refugee Law 6: 85–102. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/6.1.85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2016. Global Trends: Forced Migration in 2015.

  • Weber, Leanne. 2006. The Shifting Frontiers of Migration Control. In Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control, ed. Sharon Pickering and Leanne Weber. Springer Science & Business Media.  Dordrecht, Netherlands.

  • Weis, P. 1980. The Draft United Nations Convention on Territorial Asylum. British Yearbook of International Law 50: 151–171. https://doi.org/10.1093/bybil/50.1.151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weis, P. 1995. The Refugee Convention, 1951: the travaux préparatoires analysed, with a commentary. Cambridge International Documents Series v. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaiotti, Ruben. 2016. Externalizing Migration Management: Europe, North America and the Spread of “remote Control” Practices. Routledge: Oxon and New York.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University Faculty of Law, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia

    Asher Lazarus Hirsch

  2. Monash University School of Social Sciences, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia

    Nathan Bell

Authors
  1. Asher Lazarus Hirsch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nathan Bell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Asher Lazarus Hirsch.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hirsch, A.L., Bell, N. The Right to Have Rights as a Right to Enter: Addressing a Lacuna in the International Refugee Protection Regime. Hum Rights Rev 18, 417–437 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-017-0472-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-017-0472-4

Keywords

  • Refugees
  • Asylum
  • Right to enter
  • International law
  • Hannah Arendt