Irregular Migrants’ Right to Health Care in Europe: A Challenge for the Sociology of Human Rights

Milena Chimienti (City University London)

Debates about human rights have often crystallized dichotomized perspectives, opposing, for instance, universal rights and cultural pluralist rights; or more generally discrepancies between the normative grounding of human rights and their empirical reality. In this paper we argue that the discipline of sociology allows us to go beyond these binary or continuum conceptions of human rights. Through the case of irregular migrants’ access to healthcare in the UK and France we will explore these tensions. This paper focuses on four key issues: first, the extent to which healthcare policy is independent from immigration policy; second, the respective influence of international, national or community actors in the development of irregular migrants’ healthcare rights; third, how these rights are implemented in practice; finally, we look at the differences between nation states and what this tells us about the changing role of nation states in the field of human rights.

Key words: Sociology of human rights, irregular migration, healthcare, France, United Kingdom

MILENA CHIMIENTI is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at City University London where she lectures on human rights and social theories, migration studies and sociological theories. Her latest publications include: special issue ‘Irregular Migrants: Policy, politics, motives and everyday lives’ co-edited with Alice Bloch, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2011; ‘Social Movements of Irregular Migrants, Recognition, and Citizenship’. Globalizations, 2011, 8(3): 343-360; ‘Selling sex in order to migrate: The end of the migratory dream?’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2010, 36(1): 27 – 45.

Time: 9 December, 13.15-15.00
Venue: Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6th Floor

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