The Globalisation of Rights

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the globalisation of rights, focusing in particular on: (i) the case that citizens can be stripped of their citizenship by their nation state; (ii) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was brought in to protect people from abuses, including by their nation states; (iii) the universal, natural and individually directed nature of human rights; (iv) the tendency for migration to be viewed by all states as a problem which needs to be managed; (v) the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol, which seeks to protect people fleeing conflict and persecution; (vi) the United Nations’ 1951 definition of a refugee as being a person who requires international protection from persecution in their own country; (vii) Hannah Arendt, who argued that human rights were vital to provide support for individuals fleeing persecution, but that the nation state system required to protect them was the very system that created the concept of a refugee in the first place; (viii) Nicholas De Genova, who argues that certain states improperly define individuals coming into their country as economic migrants, rather than refugees, to avoid the requirement to grant them protections.

About the lecturer

Dr Zaki Nahaboo is a lecturer in sociology in the School of Social Sciences at Birmingham City University. Dr Nahaboo’s research interests are in postcolonial theory and international political sociology. Dr Nahaboo is co-author of the book Migrants, Borders and the European Question: The Calais Jungle (2021). His journal articles have featured in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Interventions and Citizenship Studies.