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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Why Human Rights Fail To Protect Undocumented Migrants, Gregor Noll Jan 2010

Why Human Rights Fail To Protect Undocumented Migrants, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

In this article, I depart from the factual difficulties of undocumented migrants to access a state’s protection mechanisms for avowedly universal human rights. I relate this aporia to two competing conceptions of territorial jurisdictions. Drawing on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Migrant Workers Convention, I separate the sphere of the political community (the polis) and that of the household (the oikos) in developing a political theory of undocumented migration. It rests two central tenets: one is a tributary transaction between sending state and host state, in the course of which the undocumented migrant worker is …


The Miracle Of Generative Violence? René Girard And The Use Of Force In International Law, Gregor Noll Jan 2008

The Miracle Of Generative Violence? René Girard And The Use Of Force In International Law, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

In this article, I apply Rene´ Girard’s theory of generative violence to the international law relating to the use of force. I argue that texts of international law make gestures of referral towards an immanent normativity on the fettering of divine violence. The means to this end is a form of sacrificial violence that seeks to promote the preservation and cohesion of the ‘international community’. The structuring of this violence through international law and its repeated staging reproduces the relationship of prophecy to miracle. Empirically, I draw mainly on excerpts from the 2006 US National Security Strategy.


Sacrificial Violence And Targeting In International Humanitarian Law, Gregor Noll Jan 2008

Sacrificial Violence And Targeting In International Humanitarian Law, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

Drawing on the work of René Girard, his text inquires into incidental and lawful losses of civilians in the regulation of international humanitarian law as part of a symbolic order restraining violent conflict within communities. First, I inquire into central norms on targeting in IHL, explaining their internal inconsistencies. Second, I try to show that these inconsistencies can be explaining by applying Girard's theory on sacrificial violence.


The Asylum System, Migrant Networks And The Informal Labour Market, Gregor Noll Jan 2008

The Asylum System, Migrant Networks And The Informal Labour Market, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

Governments attempting to regulate labour markets and control immigration are confronted with difficult questions. In the past, there was general agreement that the asylum system should not be exploited as a side entrance to the labour market. The two systems—asylum and labour market—were to be planned and maintained separately. But if migration is a prerequisite for asylum, does not increasingly stiffer migration control block escape for those under persecution? Prices for smuggling go up, and smugglers seek new routes, yet irregular migration continues, and the informal labour market flourishes. Here we must ask an irreverent question: is there any point …


The Insecurity Of Trafficking In International Law, Gregor Noll Jan 2007

The Insecurity Of Trafficking In International Law, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

The present chapter inquires into to the definition of trafficking in the 2000 Trafficking Protocol. The concept of trafficking seems to offer a self-evident point of departure to broach inequality and migration in the international domain. It emphasises the inequality between trafficker and the trafficked person, and States task themselves to side with the latter - and weaker - party in that relationship. Other dimensions of inequality, as that between migrants and States, are removed from the limelight of trafficking language. Trafficking of human beings is distinct from human smuggling: while trafficking is about non-consensual and exploitative relations between the …