Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Patriotism, Pandemic, And Precarity: How The Alt-Right And White Nationalist Movement Used The Pandemic, Arthur J. Jipson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This workshop will explore how the so-called Alt-Right and White Nationalist movement used conspiracy theories around the origin and challenge of the COVID-19 Pandemic to recruit members, advance their causes, and create social and cultural discord in an effort to create legitimacy for their racist and white supremacist attacks on community. After a discussion of the current state of the Alt-Right and White Nationalist movement, the workshop will interrogate the various online tools used by these groups to attack and dismantle community and human rights initiatives. The workshop concludes with an interactive activity that helps participants explore how these efforts …

Captivity As Crisis Response: Migration, The Pandemic, And Forms Of Confinement, Eleanor Paynter

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

During Europe’s recent “refugee crisis,” Italy responded to increased migrant arrivals by sea with progressively restrictive border and asylum policies. While crisis-response restrictions are perhaps unsurprising, those implemented since 2014 have produced a set of situations that appear, at least initially, paradoxical: Following Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s 2018 “Closed Ports” campaign, independently-operated rescue ships continue to be blocked from disembarking the migrants they have rescued. At the same time, asylum officials have rejected claims for protection at higher rates, while border officials deport a minority of those whose claims are rejected. Thus, under the guise of crisis management, some migrants …

The New Disappeared: Illegality, The Deportation Regime, And The Resurrection Of State Violence, Miranda Cady Hallett

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

President Donald J. Trump’s executive actions expanding immigration enforcement and reproducing stigmatizing discourses about immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers are not a new direction in immigration enforcement. While the racist dimensions of the approach are more unmasked in his rhetoric, current enforcement is merely the expansion of an entrenched project of state violence. The current panic, in other words, is the culmination of the buildup of the deportation regime (De Genova and Peutz 2010), an interconnected web of systems of incarceration and exile that serves as a broad mechanism of social control and repression.

In the U.S., this system has been …

Localizing Human Rights In Response To Global Urban Crises And Right-Wing Populism, Jackie Smith

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights are under increased threat as the world faces economic insecurity, financial volatility, climate change, and the rise of right-wing populist movements. At a time global interdependence demands more intensive cooperation among national governments to address economic and environmental crises, nationalist tendencies are polarizing politics within and among countries.

Although news headlines have focused on the rise of exclusionary and racist movements, there is evidence of significant popular mobilization around more inclusive human rights claims. Because these movements challenge basic elements of the capitalist system, they get less traction in electoral contests and remain marginal to mainstream media and …

To Be Human In A Dehumanizing World: Black Lives Matter And The Human Rights Framework, Maria Rohani

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper explores the relationship between Black Lives Matter and the human rights regime.

First, the study contextualizes the contemporary movement within the long and complicated historical relationship between racial justice struggles and the international human rights system. Second, the paper looks at the available human rights tools that could advance the goals of Black Lives Matter, with a focus on relevant international treaties, the Inter-American System, and the Universal Periodic Review. Third, the project studies the ways in which Black Lives Matter has, on its own, already engaged with human rights discourse.

Here, a sample of Twitter content will …

Faith-Based Resistance, Human Rights, And Emancipatory Practices, Curtis Kline

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Progressive political theologies can expand and deepen both the strength and the conceptualization of human rights advocacy. However, not all political theologies are an effort to defend human dignity; neither are all understandings and practices of human rights. The validation of progressive political theologies as well as the validation of human rights conceptualizations comes from their capacity to concretely change the lived reality of poor and oppressed peoples of the world.

As with political theologies, there is a constant struggle over the control of how to conceptualize what constitutes a human rights issue. While many communities of faith find liberating …