Unjust Borders: Migration to and within Europe and the ambivalence of human rights

Human rights can be ambiguous. In the European Union they “protect” Roma minorities and exclude them at the same time. This happens in the context of the ongoing, Europe-wide debates of whether states - and, by extension, the EU - have “a right to exclude,” that is, a right to close their borders. Borders, Kreide argues, are multifaceted zones of infrastructure and at the same time expanding areas of securitization. As long as borders are imposed coercively and, through this imposition, are contributing to securitization, they are illegitimate. This becomes obvious through an analysis of Europe’s external and internal border politics, the growing entanglement between the two, and the inherent power of securitization of borders.

Regina Kreide is a Professor of Political Theory and History of Ideas at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. She has published widely on global justice, human rights, international law and democracy. Her most recent publications include the Habermas-Handbook (Columbia UP 2017); Transformations of Democracy: Crisis, Protest, and Legitimation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); The Securitization of the Roma (Palgrave, 2019).

The event is sponsored by the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention.