From a Right-Based Approach to a Humanitarian Approach: In What Way Does Migration Impact Human Rights?

Abstract

This chapter aims to assess the impact of migration on human rights. My hypothesis is that migration tends to draw human rights closer to humanitarian law. What I want to analyse is why and how terms from international humanitarian law are transferred into human rights law when dealing with migration in contemporary French and European law. I will, therefore, underline the way human rights are undermined by European states in order to lessen their obligations towards migrants, and how this strategy changes the very definition of the subject of human rights, by shifting from freedom and universality to vulnerability and exception as well as by focusing on the migrant’s passive body instead of allowing him or her to act as a political being.