GLOB.IDEALIZATION MOND.IDÉALISATION - Faculty of Social ...

James Wellstead | Universal Human Rights
immigrants have been obstructed by a lack of status as a ‘citizen.’ 42 Examples
are plentiful: Mexican labourers in the USA; ethnic Karen people from
Burma into Thailand; and Filipino caretakers in multiple countries are a few
of the many cases where various groups lack effective support of a variety of
rights. In the case of Mexican migrants, difficulties arise from contrasting
conceptions of rights, citizenship and belonging that operate within the
liberal ‘contractarian’ model of countries like the USA and the liberal
‘universalist’ model of international human rights expected to be applied
from the UN level. The universalist conceptions of rights holders apply to
citizens of the human race – all humans – and are not state- or contractcentered,
but rely upon states for the enforcement of these rights. 43 As a
result, constructed ideas of belonging and citizenship (often based on notions
of ethnicity) have excluded migrant or newly arrived labourers from many
civil or political rights otherwise granted under a state-based contract
understanding of rights. The responsibility to provide universal human rights
are perceived to be the prerogative of states toward their own citizens, not to
‘non-citizens.’ While there have been some shifts in the international human
rights discourse away from individual rights tied to a particular nation-state
and citizenship toward contractarian notions of rights based on international
law, these trends are often overestimated and are restricted to some areas
within Europe or the USA. 44
As a result, many international migrants are left
42 Maher, Kristen Hill.“Who Has a Right to Rights?: Citizenship’s Exclusions in an Age of
Migration” Globalization and Human Rights Ed. Alison Brysk. Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2002.
43 Maher 28.
44 Ibid. 25.
Glob.Idealization |108