Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This article critiques the increasingly popular concept of the "safe legal pathway" in refugee politics, policy and law, using European engagement and intervention in the Sahel as its primary case study. It draws upon neo-colonial studies, necropolitics, border studies and the legal literature on sovereignty and extraterritoriality to explore the function, structure, and import of the "safe legal pathway", and its compatibility with contemporary understandings of international legal history and argumentation. Divided into four sections, the article focuses on the drivers behind Europe's migration-development-security objectives in the Sahelout of which the pathways discourse emerges, the EU's concomitant insistence on criminalising the illusive "people smuggling business model", and the role which the traditional tropes of sovereignty, territory, and civilisation play in determining policy parameters. Noting the multidirectional nature and multifunctional purposes of pathways, and focusing on the policing of migrant communities both within and outside Europe, this article provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the nature, structure, function, and regulation of the pathway, its susceptibility to being leveraged for the commodification, extraction, discipline and transformation of non-European bodies and narratives, and its place in the creation of differentiated, suspended, and anomalous legal zones for the transfer and manipulation of global norms.

Abstract
This article takes as its starting point the convergence of two rights-related grassroots movements given momentum by the pandemic's manifestly discriminatory impact: the push to recognise and address racism as a public health crisis, and the global influence of the Black Lives Matter ('BLM') movement. It considers the relevance of this moment to international human rights law, the adequacy of the response from its key institutions, and the conservative backlash, framed within the rhetoric of rights, that is challenging the very idea of structural racism. In doing so, it argues that we are witnessing a new stage of the culture wars around the language, method and assumptions of human rights law with which the discipline must engage pragmatically and strategically.

This article considers the approaches taken in the United States (US) and Australia to prioritising the resettlement of Christians from Syria and Iraq. Focusing first upon respective models and the immediate political factors that lead to their adoption, it analyses in depth the specific role played by the evangelical constituency in the US, and their theologically-infused concern for the "persecuted church" in "enslaved" lands. Recognising this movement enjoys less influence in Australia, the article considers the ways in which Australia's resettlement policies and political narratives have nonetheless increasingly participated in tropes familiar to classical antinomian political theology, not least that resettlement is tied to a redemptive generosity of the State that works to denigrate and undermine the legal obligations demanded by those who arrive irregularly by boat. The article also critiques the use of "vulnerability" as a touchstone principle for the fair allocation of scarce resettlement places, and its propensity to be used for cherry-picking purposes. Finally, as part of the argument that resettlement is susceptible to being used as a vehicle for those motivated by more explicit theological concerns, the article explores the leveraging for political, redemptive, and eschatological purposes of images and narratives of the "martyred" middle-eastern Christian.

James Hathaway has described refugee law as 'fundamentally oriented to the promotion of autonomy'. Borrowed from the Kantian roots of liberal rights theory, this theme has come to the fore as refugee advocates decry increasingly draconian experiments in deflection and deterrence. But what exactly does it mean for a refugee to exercise autonomy? And how is it connected to that other popular refrain – that those who arrive irregularly by boat in Australia, despite high recognition rates, are not 'genuine' refugees? By examining the assumptions underpinning autonomy as a contemporary political value, and working within the theoretical construct that identifies a state's 'recognition' of autonomy with authenticity, this article explores tensions within both public discourse on refugees and the discipline of refugee law itself. It considers how and why the refugee exercising 'authentic' moral agency by boarding a boat is depicted not just as a threat, but as inherently irrational (and thus not 'authentically' autonomous) and less 'genuine' (and thus virtuous) than the 'passive' refugee languishing in a camp overseas, awaiting 'our' redemptive touch. Finally, it asks whether refugee law similarly suffers from the contradictory moral promise of human rights law which places autonomy at its heart while in practice requiring that humanity be split between victim, savage and redeemer.

The language of morality and legality infuses every aspect of the Middle East conflict. From repeated assertions by officials that Israel has �the most moral army in the world� to justifications for specific military tactics and operations by reference to self-defense and proportionality, the public rhetoric is one of legal right and moral obligation. Less often heard are the voices of those on the ground whose daily experience is lived within the legal quagmire portrayed by their leaders in such uncompromising terms. This Article explores the opaque normative boundaries surrounding the actions of a specific group within the Israeli military, soldiers returning from duty in Hebron in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. By examining interviews with these soldiers by an Israeli NGO, it identifies different narratives of legality and illegality which inform their conduct, contrasting their failure to adhere to conventional legal discourses with the broader �legalization� of military activities. Seeking an explanation for this disjunction, it explores the ways in which the soldiers� stories nonetheless reflect attempts to negotiate various normative and legal realities. It places these within the legal landscape of the Occupied Palestinian Territories which has been normatively re-imagined by various forces in Israeli society, from the judicially-endorsed discourse of deterrence manifested in the day-today practices of brutality, intimidation and �demonstrating power,� to the growing influence of nationalist-religious interpretations of self-defense and the misuse of post-modernist theory by the military establishment to �smooth out� the moral and legal urban architectures of occupation. The Article concludes by considering the hope for change evident in the very act of soldiers telling ethically-oriented stories about their selves, and in the existence of a movement willing to provide the space for such reflections in an attempt to confront Israeli society with the day-to-day experiences of the soldier in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

The language of morality and legality infuses every aspect of the Middle East conflict. From repeated assertions by officials that Israel has �the most moral army in the world� to justifications for specific military tactics and operations by reference to self-defense and proportionality, the public rhetoric is one of legal right and moral obligation. Less often heard are the voices of those on the ground whose daily experience is lived within the legal quagmire portrayed by their leaders in such uncompromising terms. This Article explores the opaque normative boundaries surrounding the actions of a specific group within the Israeli military, soldiers returning from duty in Hebron in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. By examining interviews with these soldiers by an Israeli NGO, it identifies different narratives of legality and illegality which inform their conduct, contrasting their failure to adhere to conventional legal discourses with the broader �legalization� of military activities. Seeking an explanation for this disjunction, it explores the ways in which the soldiers� stories nonetheless reflect attempts to negotiate various normative and legal realities. It places these within the legal landscape of the Occupied Palestinian Territories which has been normatively re-imagined by various forces in Israeli society, from the judicially-endorsed discourse of deterrence manifested in the day-today practices of brutality, intimidation and �demonstrating power,� to the growing influence of nationalist-religious interpretations of self-defense and the misuse of post-modernist theory by the military establishment to �smooth out� the moral and legal urban architectures of occupation. The Article concludes by considering the hope for change evident in the very act of soldiers telling ethically-oriented stories about their selves, and in the existence of a movement willing to provide the space for such reflections in an attempt to confront Israeli society with the day-to-day experiences of the soldier in the Occupied Palestinian Territories