Model International Mobility Convention

While people are as mobile as they ever were in our globalized world, the movement of people across borders lacks global regulation. This leaves many refugees in protracted displacement and many migrants unprotected in irregular and dire situations. Meanwhile, some states have become concerned that their borders have become irrelevant. International mobility—the movement of individuals across borders for any length of time as visitors, students, tourists, labor migrants, entrepreneurs, long-term residents, asylum seekers, or refugees—has no common definition or legal framework. To address this key gap in international law, and the growing gaps in protection and responsibility that are leaving people vulnerable, the "Model International Mobility Convention" proposes a framework for mobility with the goals of reaffirming the existing rights afforded to mobile people (and the corresponding rights and responsibilities of states) as well as expanding those basic rights where warranted. In 213 articles divided over eight chapters, the Convention establishes both the minimum rights afforded to all people who cross state borders as visitors, and the special rights afforded to tourists, students, migrant workers, investors and residents, forced migrants, refugees, migrant victims of trafficking and migrants caught in countries in crisis. Some of these categories are covered by existing international legal regimes. However, in this Convention these groups are for the first time brought together under a single framework. An essential feature of the Convention is that it is cumulative. This means, for the most part, that the chapters build on and add rights to the set of rights afforded to categories of migrants covered by earlier chapters. The Convention contains not only provisions that afford rights to migrants and, to a lesser extent, States (such as the right to decide who can enter and remain in their territory). It also articulates the responsibilities of migrants vis-à-vis States and the rights and responsibilities of different institutions that do not directly respond to a right held by migrants

Rethinking Membership: Statelessness, Domination, and the Limits of Contemporary Citizenship

This dissertation examines the politics and ethics of forced migration from both a conceptual and normative perspective. The dissertation does so by focusing on the phenomenon of what Hannah Arendt referred to as ‘statelessness’—a term which is deployed in this project in an extended sense that includes all persons who might be in need of international protection because their own state is unable or unwilling to effectively secure their human rights. In approaching statelessness from the perspective of political theory, the primary task of my dissertation is to offer a novel conceptual account of the harm that is done by statelessness or the de facto loss of membership within a political community and what this entails for how we ought to respond to the global reality of forced displacement. In doing so, this project challenges conventional approaches and intuitions regarding our ethical responsibilities to refugees and others categories of displaced persons. The goal of this critical reconstruction is to recast the nature of our responsibilities as obligations of justice, as opposed to those of humanitarian assistance. At the same time, this account also foregrounds the importance of constructing fair and effective responses to these forms of exclusion that attend to the role of agency in remedying the loss of membership.Ph.D.2020-07-11 00:00:0