Human rights paradox: Explaining the undeportability of irregular Chinese migrants in the UK

Abstract

Many migrants remain in host countries under a state of undeportability—a paradoxical circumstance in which they confront both an extreme unlikelihood of deportation and an imminent threat of it. Drawing on the case of irregular Chinese migrants in the UK, this article argues that the situation stems from what I term a ‘human rights paradox’—a contradiction between the universal human rights norms that mandate governments to protect the rights inherent to all human beings and the persistent state sovereignty and the growing anti-immigration sentiment that relegates non-citizens, particularly those having no legal status, to the margins of the human rights system. Hence, undeportability has its roots in the foundational principles of liberal democracy, rather than simply resulting from ineffective immigration policies or individual resistance to deportation.