Recent critical approaches on human rights have exalted the potentiality of this category for seeking progressive agendas insofar as they are enacted within counter-hegemonic cognitive frames towards the construction of “subaltern human rights”. Others, however, have pointed out that the human rights institutional and political hegemony makes other valuable emancipatory strategies less available, and that this foregrounds problems of participation and procedure at the expense of distribution. Finally, others have explained how the abstractedness of the category entails a de-politicization or (...) an emptiness that, of course, can be filled by progressive activism, but whose substance is easily reappropriated by those in power. By engaging with the above-mentioned perspectives, and following the decolonial approach, I suggest that the category human rights can be decolonized and being used for progressive agendas only after a comprehensive critique of liberal legality has been performed. (shrink)

International migration poses a dilemma for capitalist welfare states. This paper considers the ethical dimensions of that dilemma. It begins by addressing two questions associated with the provision of social rights for migrants: first, the extent to which differential forms of social citizenship may be associated with processes of civic stratification; second, the ambiguous nature of the economic, social and cultural rights components of the international human rights framework. It then proceeds to discuss, on the one hand, existing attempts to (...) classify or taxonomise different kinds of immigration/incorporation and welfare regime and, on the other, the different ways in which migrants may be socially constructed. Building on this analysis the paper develops an alternative taxonomy that is concerned with the different ethical premises from which the social rights of migrants may be constructed or justified. The paper concludes by applying the ideal of ?Migration without Borders? as a means to critique existing constructions of social rights. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic and climate crisis have highlighted the power of governments in relation to people and the societies in which they live. This article looks at two sociological approaches that together capture the core features of the relationship between sovereignty, society and individual safety. Sociologists of human rights point to the importance of sovereignty for the enforcement of human rights and draw on the work of Arendt, who argues all rights are lost to those who find themselves outside the (...) protection of the state. Wickham’s Hobbesian sociology adds an important social dimension to these ideas. He adopts Hobbes’ argument that sovereignty secures both society and the protection of people. The article recovers additional ideas in Hobbes’ theory of rights that further link these two approaches. For Hobbes, governments hold a responsibility to protect their citizens’ right to survive. The article discusses the relevance of these ideas to the coronavirus pandemic and climate crisis. It argues sociology is well-placed to explore ways in which the continued exercise of sovereign power in relation to society and human survival is shaping humanity’s response to these global crises. (shrink)