When humans become migrants

A blog containing Marie-Bénédicte Dembour's 30 episode podcast to support her book.

Surely Not: Procedurally Lawful Age Assessments of Unaccompanied Minors

In the United Kingdom, when an unaccompanied asylum seeking child is not believed by the authorities to be a child (i.e. under 18), an age assessment procedure is carried out by  two social workers. These are employed by the local authority where the child happens to be. If the assessment concludes the assessed person is…

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Why the UK must welcome the young people from Calais who cannot prove their age

The UK government has wanted to leave to their dramatic fate children, teenagers, refugees and migrants who find themselves in Calais and elsewhere in Europe. This is true even of those minors with relatives in the UK, with a legal right to enter the country. The callousness and abdication of responsibility of this stance have…

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Ramadan v. Malta: When will the Strasbourg Court understand that nationality is a core human rights issue?

This post was published by the Strasbourg Observers earlier today. I am grateful for their permission to re-publish it here. It does not seem an exaggeration to say that the recent judgment in Ramadan v. Malta suggests that citizenship revocation is not generally problematic under the European Convention on Human Rights. How else might one…

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The 30 podcast episodes of When Humans Become Migrants are now all in one place

Creating a blog for disseminating the main arguments of my book When Humans Become Migrants beyond a readership of academic specialists has proved a good idea. The resulting podcasts have attracted lots of positive feedback. However, it has also become clear that the blog form makes it rather difficult to consult any given podcast after it…

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Migrants’ avoidance of the European Court of Human Rights concerns us all

This post was published by the Strasbourg Observers earlier today. I am grateful for their permission to re-publish it here. Every year towards the end of January, the President of the European Court of Human Rights holds a press conference that takes stock of the previous year. This year, President Raimondi reported in his speech…

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Episode 30: The right to be humane should be recognised paramount

When Humans Become Migrants ends by asking whether the right to be humane should top any human rights list. The question has lost none of its pertinence since the book was written. It also ends this podcast series.  

Episode 29: Let us also think about the Strasbourg procedures

Procedures are very important. Before a court, they can make or break a case. This is as true at the European Court of Human Rights as anywhere else. This podcast highlights three areas of concern in relation to migrant cases.   The first concerns provisional orders. The Court can order a defendant state to keep…

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Episode 28: The way forward is to expand ECHR guarantees

As we come towards the end of this series, it is important to think about ways to remedy the weaknesses that have been identified. In this podcast, I recommend that the European Court of Human Rights expands its interpretation of especially three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.   Article 3 concerns inhuman…

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Episode 27: Jesus Vélez Loor has a story worth turning into a film

No one human rights institution can deliver a perfect world. This is true even of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which has been greatly praised in this series.   One weakness is that the Inter-American Court decides only a few cases a year. As a result only a limited number of victims find redress…

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Episode 26: Can a child ever be just a ‘fait accompli’?

Can a woman be expelled to her country of origin when she has a young child who is a national of the would-be expelling European state and her expulsion would mean child and mother are separated?   In one famous case, the European Court of Human Rights decided that the mother’s expulsion would violate the…

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