The European Court of Human Rights, Upending Migrant Rights: On Marie-Bénédicte Dembour’s When Humans Become Migrants

Abstract

Marie-Bénédicte Dembour's When Humans Become Migrants: Study of the European Court of Human Rights with an Inter-American Counterpoint (2015) examines the origins, evolution, and effects of the migration case law of the European Court of Human Rights and contends that it systematically defers to state interests to the detriment of migrant applicants. This chapter discusses the book's relevance as a true junction in the critical study of migrant rights in Europe and a demonstration of the analytical power of in-depth, anthropologically inspired, and qualitative evaluations of rulings by international human rights courts. Special attention is paid to the historical and anthropologically informed appraisal of the ECtHR's case law, Dembour's concept of the ‘Strasbourg reversal’, and her use of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as a rights-affirming counterpoint to the European Court. The chapter also situates When Humans Become Migrants in the broader contexts of the crisis paradigm that continues to dominate Europe's approach to migration, Hannah Arendt's fundamental critique of the lack of a right to have rights, and scholarship on the proliferation and variable and contingent authority of international courts.