Human rights and border abolitionism: an unsolvable tension?

Guest post by Marco Perolini. Dr Marco Perolini holds a PhD in Political Sociology from Goldsmiths College. His research focuses on solidarity, alliance-building and the construction of human rights from below in migrant activism. He works as policy advisor with Amnesty International. He focuses on criminalization, including in the areas of sexuality and reproduction, and criminal justice. Twitter: @esteban80paris.

Scholars, activists and practitioners often emphasise the tension between human rights and border abolitionism. The human rights legal system pivots on the state’s commitment to upholding human rights as they are codified in international and regional treaties. In contrast, border abolitionism is a radical critique of the structures underpinning border regimes, including the nation-state.

In this blog post, I focus on migrant activism and build on my latest publication to nuance aspects of this tension. Specifically, I make two key arguments. First, human rights are not exclusively legal notions codified in international law. Migrant activism expands legal principles and constructs non-legal notions of human rights that contest the prerogative of nation-states to control their borders. Second, border abolitionism does not prescribe an overnight path of emancipation from the oppressive nation-state; it can also comprise  non-reformist reforms, which weaken border regimes in the longer term. Migrant activists pursue these non-reformist reforms also by making use of legal notions of human rights.

Varied notions of human rights

Scholars and human rights practitioners have often turned a blind eye to the variety of approaches and notions of human rights outside the legal system. The role of social movements and marginalized actors in constructing and making use of non-legal notions of human rights has also received little attention.

In 2018, I had the opportunity to investigate the connections between border abolitionism and human rights while participating in the collective mobilisation of five migrant organisations in Berlin as a researcher-activist. Migrant and pro-migrant activists embraced varied understandings of human rights beyond their legal meaning; for instance, they often interpreted human rights as aspirations for social justice. In an interview, Julia, an activist from Kenya, emphasised the importance of freedom of movement “for those people with less privileges.” For her, freedom of movement was a principle to counterbalance structural and historical inequalities, resulting in mobility restrictions and the racialisation of migrants.

Julia’s interpretation of freedom of movement exceeds its legal meaning. Indeed, while freedom of movement is a human right protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and some international human rights treaties, these instruments only allow people to leave their own country; they do not allow them to enter or reside in another country of their choice.

Freedom of movement and right to stay

Julia’s understanding of freedom of movement mirrored its collective use by the migrant activists whom I met.

The collective demands that migrant activists formulate against border regimes are grounded in their own experiences of oppression, and in decades of grassroots organising. The abolition of asylum shelters, or camps as activists frame them, where migrants who claim asylum are compelled to live, is one of the key demands weaved against border regimes. Activists also demand the abolition of other aspects of border regimes, including the multiple legal status categories that divide ‘deserving refugees’ from ‘under-deserving’ migrants. In their collective mobilisation, the migrant activists whom I met self-identified as refugees, irrespective of their legal status, and claimed their right to stay in Germany, which challenged all deportations.

These demands are grounded in notions of human rights that exceed their legal codification. Activists construct the idea of the right to stay by interpreting freedom of movement as the unrestricted possibility for people to move to, reside, and live in the country of their choice.

Activists construct and rely on non-legal notions of human rights to advocate for a model of migration governance that is diametrically opposite to the dominant one. They propose a free (non) governance of migration that is grounded in border abolitionism as it opposes restrictions on mobility, legal hierarchies between migrants and refugees and all deportations.

Non-reformist reforms and abolitionism

Migrant and pro-migrant activists, however, do not completely discard legal notions of human rights. For example, they make strategic use of the idea of the right to seek and enjoy asylum, which is a legal right. In an interview, Tamara, a European activist, emphasised that claiming asylum “still gives many people the only opportunity to come to Europe and it benefits many people right now . . . They should use that opportunity”.  

Tamara’s standpoint seems contradicting the opposition to legal hierarchies, which, combined with the idea of the right to stay for everyone, would entail the end of the asylum system. Some strategic considerations partly explain the conundrum. For example, grassroots organisations evoked the right to seek and enjoy asylum as this enabled them to establish alliances with more mainstream organisations, which were key in 2018 when the far-right was on the rise and the authorities made asylum and migration laws even harsher.

 More importantly, the right to asylum and the right to stay are not contradictory if seen as part of an abolitionist practice involving both non-reformist reforms and the abolition of the conditions underpinning border regimes as a system of oppression. Claiming the right to asylum is a non-reformist reform as it weakens border regimes in the longer term. The right to asylum constrains the capacity of nation-states to restrict mobility because it requires allowing people to enter their territory to seek asylum. In the longer term, by claiming the right to stay, activists seek the abolition of the mechanisms that sustain border regimes, including their role in maintaining racial inequalities and labour segmentation along racial lines.

Conclusion

Legal notions of human rights can be useful building blocks to formulate non-reformist reforms that weaken border regimes. Migrant and pro-migrant activists in Berlin combine these non-reformist reforms with more far-reaching abolitionist demands based on non-legal understandings of human rights. These include freedom of movement and the right to stay that challenge the foundations of the nation-state, including its prerogative to control borders and restrict mobility.

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