Making Claims for Migrant Workers: Human Rights and Citizenship

Migrant workers claims for greater protection in a globalized world are typically expressed either in the idiom of international human rights or citizenship. Instead of contrasting these two normative frames, the paper explores the extent to which human rights and citizenship discourses intersect when it comes to claims by migrant workers. An analysis of the international human and labour rights instruments that are specifically designed for migrant workers reveals how neither discourse questions the assumption of territorial state sovereignty. Drawing upon sociological and political approaches to human rights claims, I evaluate the Arendtian-inspired critique of international human rights, which is that they ignore the very basis ‘right to have rights’. In doing so, I discuss the different dimensions of citizenship and conclude that international rights can be used by migrant workers to assert right claims that reinforce a conception of citizenship that, although different from national citizenship, has the potential to address their distinctive social location

Cold Meats

This story was published in the Autumn 1983 issues of The South Dakota Review

Frost Like Ashes: Review Essay of Cormac McCarthy\u27s The Road

Reviewed Title: McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. 1st Vintage International ed. 287 p. ISBN 9780307387899

City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (Book Review)

Reviewed Title: City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism by Abram C. Van Engen. Yale University Press, 2020. 379 pp. ISBN: 9780300229752

Returning: A Spiritual Journey (Book Review)

Reviewed Title: Returning: A Spiritual Journey. Dan Wakefield. New York: Penguin Books, 1989, 250 pp