Bordering human rights: displaced peoples’ experiences of containment and human rights violations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Contributing to debates in human rights and critical migration and border studies, this article focuses on how certain bordering practices limit displaced people from accessing universally recognised human rights. Specifically, it draws attention to some key bordering practices that restrict the physical mobility of displaced people in Turkey and Mexico. These two countries have become responsible for offering protection to many displaced people while simultaneously containing their mobility towards desired destinations. The analysis draws on extensive policy, program, and scholarly documents, and the testimonials of displaced people in these two regions. We contend that human rights violations are not merely an outcome of protection gaps for non-citizens in the international human rights regime; they can also result from deliberate containment and regulatory practices rooted in historic and contemporary hostile attitudes towards displaced people. We coin these practices ‘bordering human rights’. We further argue that these practices normalise the exclusion of displaced people from avenues of permanent protection in countries that migrants view as having the potential to provide them with safety and access to social services.