February | 2015 | When humans become migrants

Episode seven: Strasbourg wakes up to the predicament of migrants

In this episode I discuss the moment when migrants began to be able to make successful applications to the European Court of Human Rights. [podcast]https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/humanrights/files/2015/02/hrm7_1983_strasbourg_wakes_up_to_the_predicament_of_migrants-o9l3eg.mp3[/podcast] After the Court system was set up in 1959, there were many applications from migrants, but they were either ruled inadmissible or ended on friendly settlements. The Court did not…

Episode six: The different approach of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

In this episode, we turn to another system of human rights protection and see that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has made pronouncements which are intended to give rights to migrants. [podcast]https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/humanrights/files/2015/02/hrm6_the_inter-american_court_on_nationality-1oi78iu.mp3[/podcast] I examine what happened more than thirty years ago, when Costa Rica was facing an influx of refugees from war-thorn neighbouring Nicaragua….

Episode five: The Strasbourg reversal, or why legal technique matters

In this episode I identify an interpretative practice of the European Court of Human Rights that I call the “Strasbourg reversal”. [podcast]https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/humanrights/files/2015/02/hrm5_the_strasbourg_reversal-20e6ctl.mp3[/podcast] The previous episode introduced the Adulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v United Kingdom case of 1985. Basically, the ruling established that migrants have no automatic right to be reunited with close family members. This…

Episode four: Family reunion is not a right

In this episode I discuss the first migrant case to have come before the European Court of Human Rights. [podcast]https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/humanrights/files/2015/02/hrm4_family_reunion_is_not_a_right-2anbset.mp3[/podcast] Adulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v United Kingdom (1985) considered the case of three “immigration widows” who were legally settled in the UK and wanted their husbands to join them. The women’s claim that their right…