Conclusion

Abstract

This book aims to confront, discuss, and clarify the structural antinomy extant in the legal discourse between the state and the state’s obligation to protect human rights. During the ‘golden age’ of the nation state, state sovereignty was considered as the final and decisive goal according to which and for which laws that superseded the movements of human beings across national borders were created. Today, since the outset of a post-national world, the state apparatus and its interests can still be regarded as key figures and criteria for migration regulation, albeit we believe that these interests should always be understood as means to reach the higher goal of the realisation of human rights. By investigating these state-rights problematic relations from a multidisciplinary perspective, the authors suggest three major areas where the law and its actors may ‘re-think’ the complex relation between state sovereignty and individuals’ rights to move from one country to another. First, revising and re-adapting the terminology of the legal and political discourses surrounding the phenomenon of migration, in particular when it comes to its basic components, is warranted. Second, another group of authors aspire to give traction to structural changes in the approach used to tackle legal issues raised by migration in relation to the sovereignty of the state. Third and finally, the book generally boosts the setting up of individuals and their rights at the centre of the legal discourse about migrants and state sovereignty.