Why Human Rights Fail to Protect Undocumented Migrants

Gregor Noll (Lund University)

I intend to first present core findings from my earlier research on the traditions of thought that make human rights law rather unhelpful for undocumented migrants. This work focused on the question of jurisdiction and operated with a distinction between polis (from which undocumented migrants are excluded) and oikos (into which undocumented migrants are included). In the course of the seminar, I shall try to move from a critique of current understandings of jurisdiction as tied to the physis to the question whether a different understanding might be developed. To this end, I shall draw on Martin Heidegger’s essay “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” to inquire into the preconditions for a changed understanding of jurisdiction.

Gregor Noll is professor of international law at the Faculty of Law, Lund University. Currently, he occupies the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg Foundations Chair in Commemoration of Samuel Pufendorf. His research is in the area of refugee law, human rights law, international humanitarian law and the theory of international law. In 2010, he guest-edited an issue of the European Journal of Migration and Law on “The Law of Undocumented Migration” in which the work of a group of five researchers at his Faculty on undocumented migration was reported. At present, he is writing on the norm of proportionality in international humanitarian law rules appertaining to targeting in armed conflict. Some of his publications are at http://works.bepress.com/gregor_noll/
Information on the work of the International Legal Research Group at Lund is at www.pufendorf.org

Friday 5 October, 13.15-15.00
Faculty of Law, room 546, Magnus Lagabøtes Plass 1
Poster