No abstract

The article examines the constraints that irregular migrants' immigration status exerts on the realisation of their basic social human rights. To this end, the article focuses on the right to health care and undertakes a comparative study of irregular migrants' access to health care in France, the United Kingdom and Canada. The study shows that States perceive the conferment of social rights on irregular migrants as an erosion of the government's immigration power notwithstanding their characterisation as human rights. The resource-intensive nature of the right to health care further heightens States' reluctance to extend this right to irregular migrants. Yet compliance with international human rights law and respect for human dignity require that States reinstate personhood as a source of rights and therefore reassess the relevance of their immigration power.

No abstract

T-related rights brings to the fore the tensions that exist between human rights, citizenship and the sovereign state, and exposes the protection gaps in the international human rights regime. With this in mind, I consider the merits of a vulnerability analysis in international human rights law (IHRL). I posit that, detached from specific groups and reconceptualised as universal, vulnerability can be reclaimed as a foundation and tool of IHRL. I further contend that the deployment of a vulnerability analysis can alleviate the exclusionary dimension of IHRL and extend protections to irregular migrants. On this basis, I investigate the development of a vulnerability analysis in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. I argue that, in C a vulnerability analysis can improve protection standards for irregular migrants in the field of health.

International human rights law attaches the right of health care to the person. States, however, predicate this right on membership in the national community and access to publicly subsidised health care is normally contingent on national membership. With this in mind, this article considers the significance of a human rights approach to access to health care and undertakes a comparative study of health-care provision for irregular migrants in France and the UK.