Introduction: contesting human rights – pathways of change

Brysk, Alison

doi:10.4337/9781788972864.00008

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…8 Th e constructive intersection of feminist and human rights movements has empowered struggles for recognition, representation, responsibility, and resistanceand fostered greater awareness of the linkages among these pathways to change. 9 Recognition of hidden or marginalized groups such as sex workers revealed by a feminist analysis has strengthened campaigns against femicide, traffi cking and police abuse, and fostered intersectional struggles for health rights, racial justice, and gender diversity (see Stemple this volume). First-wave liberal feminist claims for representation-from parliaments to peace accords-expanded to broader campaigns for gender equity throughout global governance, that carry interdependent consequences for political, economic, health, and even environmental rights.…”

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confidence: 99%

Speaking Feminism to Rights: Intersections of Ethos and Praxis

Brysk¹

2022

Human Rights at the Intersections

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confidence: 99%

Speaking Feminism to Rights: Intersections of Ethos and Praxis

Brysk¹

2022

Human Rights at the Intersections

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“…This local contestation of human rights also challenges human rights to be more reflective of local concerns (De Feyter et al, 2011). In addition, individuals are the driving force behind the dissemination of ideas and practices in relation to human rights at the local level, increasing their prevalence and reach around the world (Brysk, 2019;Durmuş, 2020;Risse-Kappen et al, 1999). Human rights in the city, and human rights for local migration policies, thus become 'coalition magnets' (Béland & Cox, 2016) bringing diverse actors and stakeholders together, mobilizing them around a common agenda.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In focusing on the level of the individual, we highlighted underlying elements such as background, motivations, and interactions with others that enabled individuals to come into contact and engage with human rights. However, a different level of analysis could reveal the macro and/or meso level actors, structural factors and corresponding 'pathways of influence' (Brysk, 2019) that operate in parallel with -and reinforce -bottom-up initiatives led by individuals. For instance, international institutions, transnational campaigns, and an active local civil society, among others, can strengthen the effectiveness of human rights at the local level by pressuring national and local authorities to adopt human rights-based policies .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars often analyse the response to 'emerging channels of horizontal or dialectical international influence' of the so-called 'international human rights regime', consisting of laws, courts, institutions and professionals. The question of effectiveness of human rights is placed within the context of socio-legal and social science literature on ideas, how those ideas spread, how they gain ownership and become norms to which actors adhere (Béland & Cox, 2016;Berman, 2007;Brysk, 2019;Risse-Kappen & Sikkink, 1999). Risse-Kappen, Ropp, and Sikkink (1999) have sought to empirically prove that a causal relationship exists between the idea of human rights and improvement of the standards of well-being on the ground.…”

Section: Human Rights Effectiveness and The Role Of Local Authorities...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While local governments have been receiving attention from scholars concerning their role in human rights realisation, the more general question regarding the effectiveness of human rights has puzzled other scholars -albeit with inconsistent or conflicting results (Brysk, 2019). Bearing in mind the most important challenge to 59 With the term refugees, we refer to forced migrants in general, be it asylum seekers, people who have obtained international protection status or 'guest' in the case of Turkey.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unmoored, not Adrift

Miellet¹

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This dissertation explores the interplay between the politics of human rights and forced migration in several Dutch and German municipalities. It sought to answer the question of why and how municipal actors engage with human rights in the context of forced migration, and through which encounters and spaces human rights-based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants develop. To guide my inquiry into this twofold question, five sub-questions on themes running through the chapters of this dissertation were formulated. These five questions focus on municipal actors’ (1) motives for engaging with human rights, (2) their understandings of human rights, (3) their frames and strategies to legitimate municipal approaches in this area, (4) the spaces and encounters through which human-rights based responses develop (5) and the spaces through which their limits manifest. First of all, my PhD research shows that even in relatively hospitable environments, where international legal norms and principles are widely endorsed, municipal actors carefully weigh different strategies and navigate dilemmas when invoking human rights. They use human rights as a source of inspiration for local human-rights based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants and as a source of legitimation to justify local divergence from national policies. Secondly, I highlight how municipal actors have different understandings of the local relevance of human rights and responsibilities regarding forced migration. By focusing on institutional, rather than everyday settings, I tried to bring into focus how local engagements with human rights may centre on contesting understandings of human rights responsibilities and duty bearers, as opposed to rights holders and norm addressees (forced migrants). In the last two chapters of this thesis, I zoom in on how different (normative) understandings of arrival shape local efforts to develop rights-based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants. Third, this thesis points to different strategies to legitimate municipal involvement, and argues it is important to differentiate between discursive, discreet and discretionary strategies and to consider the implications of their application in different settings. Fourth, the thesis offers a spatially aware examination of the politics of human rights and forced migration, by examining how institutional settings and public spaces in cities, towns and rural municipalities, are more than simply a stage for encounters between forced migrants and municipal actors, because the functions, design and artefacts of these spaces also mould the local politics of human rights and forced migration. Fifth, this investigation brings into focus how municipal actors and other actors negotiate the limits of rights-based approaches to forced migration and zooms in on airports and asylum seeker centres as sites where the limits of municipal mandates and rights-based approaches are negotiated. To conclude, this thesis argues that exploring these five dimensions is essential to understanding the complexities of local human-rights based responses to forced migration and to developing a broad understanding of the local interplay between the politics of human rights and forced migration in these different German and Dutch localities.

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How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root: Local Governments and Refugees in Turkey

Durmuş

2021

Myth or Lived Reality

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The human rights regime—as law, institutions and practice—has been facing criticism for decades regarding its effectiveness, particularly in terms of unsatisfactory overall implementation and the failure to protect the most vulnerable who do not enjoy the protection of their States: refugees. Turkey is the country hosting the largest refugee population, with around four million at the end of May 2020 (https://www.unhcr.org/tr/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2020/06/UNHCR-Turkey-Operational-Update-May-2020.pdf). As an administratively centralised country, Turkey’s migration policy is implemented by central government agencies, but this has not proved sufficient to guarantee the human rights of refugees on the ground. Meanwhile, in connection with urbanisation, decentralisation and globalisation, local governments around the world are receiving increasing attention from migration studies, political science, law, sociology and anthropology. In human rights scholarship, the localisation of human rights and the potential role of local governments have been presented as ways to counter the shortcomings in the effectiveness of the human rights regime and discourse. While local governments may have much untapped potential, a thorough analysis of the inequalities between local governments in terms of access to resources and opportunities is essential. The Turkish local governments which form the basis of this research, operate in a context of legal ambiguity concerning their competences and obligations in the area of migration. They also have to deal with large differences when it comes to resources and workload. In practice, therefore, there is extreme divergence amongst municipalities in the extent to which they engage with refugee policies. This chapter seeks to answer the question why and how certain local governments in Turkey come to proactively engage in policy-making that improves the realisation of refugees’ rights. Exploratory grounded field research among Turkish local governments reveals four main factors that enable and facilitate the engagement of local governments in refugee policies: (1) the capacity of and institutionalisation in local governments; (2) the dissemination of practices and norms surrounding good local migration and rights-based governance through networks; (3) the availability of cooperation and coordination with other actors in the field, and (4) political will. Collectively, these factors illustrate how a new norm—the norm that local governments can and ought to engage in policy-making improving the rights of refugees—is cross-pollinating and taking root among Turkish local governments. This understanding will provide valuable insights into how norms are developed, travel and are institutionalised within social and institutional networks, and how differences in access, capacity, political and cooperative opportunities may facilitate and obscure the path to policies improving human rights on the ground.

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Introduction: contesting human rights – pathways of change

Cited by 3 publications

References 15 publications

Speaking Feminism to Rights: Intersections of Ethos and Praxis

Speaking Feminism to Rights: Intersections of Ethos and Praxis

Unmoored, not Adrift

How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root: Local Governments and Refugees in Turkey

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