Cosmopolitanism Migration And Universal Human Rights

This book describes the potential and challenges of cosmopolitanism from a philosophical and historical point of view. Through the prism of cosmopolitanism, this book considers how the recent surge in migration is affecting our current reality, while also taking stock of the contemporary potential of cosmopolitan ideas. It considers and compares the significance of religion and culture for the wider societal acceptance or rejection of refugees. Moreover, the book examines the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence on immigration policies, non-refoulement, humanitarian law and gender. It presents empirically based research of a quantitative, qualitative and comparative nature regarding the determinants of attitudes towards cosmopolitanism and more generally concerning public opinion on migration issues, and reflects on conceptions of and attitudes towards citizenship, while also imagining new forms of citizenship. This book serves as a comprehensive overview and resource for migration scholars from the social sciences and the humanities, as well as students and other stakeholders in the fields of migration and human rights.

In recent years there has been an explosion in the usage and visibility of the language of human rights, but what does this mean for the role of the media? For evolving ideas about human rights? And for the prospect of shared cosmopolitan values? Ekaterina Balabanova argues that in order to answer these questions there needs to be a deconstruction of monolithic ways of thinking about the media and human rights, incorporating the spectrum of political arguments and worldviews that underpin both. Ten case studies are presented which illustrate many of the problems and challenges associated with the relationship between the media and human rights. The examples range from cases of humanitarian intervention to analysis of global human rights campaigning on refugee issues; from immigration and asylum, to genocide, freedom of speech and torture. Anchored in an appreciation of the political conflicts and compromises at the heart of international human rights agreements, The Media and Human Rights is an invaluable resource for students studying media and human rights, international politics, security studies and political communication.

Migration and cosmopolitanism are said to be complementary. Cosmopolitanism means to be a citizen of the world, and migration, without impediments, should be the natural starting point for a cosmopolitan view. However, the intensification of migration, through an increasing number of refugees and economic migrants, has generated anti-cosmopolitan stances. Using the concept of cosmopolitanism as it emerges from migrant protests like?Sans Papiers, No One Is Illegal, and No Borders, an interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses this discrepancy and explores how migrant protest movements elicit a new form of radical cosmopolitanism. The combination of basic theoretical concepts and detailed empirical analysis in this book will advance the theoretical debate on the inherent cosmopolitan aspects of migrant activism. As such, it will be a valuable contribution to students, researchers and scholars of political science, sociology and philosophy.

Understanding the ancient and long sidelined concept of cosmopolitanism has suddenly found a fresh impetus and urgency. Globalization, international migration, multiculturalism and global social movements, as well as atrocities committed by those with narrow religious and ethnic identities, have led to reposing of two basic cosmopolitan questions: Can we ever live peacefully with one another? What do we share, collectively, as human beings? The term cosmopolitanism has attracted many understandings and uses over the years. Covering the global, national, social and personal levels of analysis, the authors consider the multiple meanings of the term in the past and in the present and develop new ways of conceiving cosmopolitanism. Through challenging old assumptions and advancing new analytical frameworks, the collection provides a full and representative set of views on the nature, definition and prospects of cosmopolitanism. Written by eminent scholars and publicly recognised intellectuals from a variety of cultural backgrounds, this book is the most comprehensive account of the theory and practice of cosmopolitanism yet attempted.

A comprehensive analysis of how globalization has altered political conflict, giving a fresh perspective on the contemporary rise of populism.

The language of human rights has become the public vocabulary of our contemporary world. Ironically, as the political influence of human rights has grown, their philosophical justification has become ever more controversial. Building on a theory of discourse ethics and communicative rationality, this book addresses the politics and philosophy of human rights against the background of the broader social transformations that are shaping the modern world. Rejecting the reduction of international human rights to the Trojan horse of a neo-liberal empire's bid for world power, as well as the conservative objections to legal cosmopolitanism as encroachments upon democratic sovereignty, Benhabib develops two key concepts to move beyond these false antitheses. International human rights norms need contextualization in specific polities through processes of what she calls 'democratic iterations.' Furthermore, such norms have a 'jurisgenerative power,' in that they enable new actors to enter fields of social and political contestation; they promote new vocabularies for public claim-making and anticipate a justice to come. Ranging over themes such as sovereignty, citizenship, genocide, European anti-semitism, the crisis of the nation-state, and the 'scarf affair' in contemporary Europe and Turkey, this major new book by one of our leading political theorists reflects upon the political transformations of our times and makes a compelling case for a cosmopolitanism without illusions.

Cosmopolitanism, as an intellectual and political project, has failed. The portrayal of human rights, especially European, as evidence of cosmopolitanism in practice is misguided. Cosmopolitan theorists point to the rise of claims-making to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) among Europe’s Muslims to protect their right to religious freedom, mainly concerning the hijab, as evidence of cosmopolitan justice. However, the outcomes of such claims-making show that far from signifying a cosmopolitan moment, European human rights law has failed Europe’s Muslims. Human Rights, Islam and the Failure of Cosmopolitanism provides an empirical examination of claims-making and government policy in Western Europe focusing mainly on developments in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. A consideration of public debates and European law of conduct in the public sphere shows that cosmopolitan optimism has misjudged the magnitude of the impact claims-making among Europe’s Muslims. To overcome this cul-de-sac, European Muslims should turn to a new ‘politics of rights’ to pursue their right to religious expression. This book is a theoretically challenging re-evaluation of cosmopolitan arguments through a rigorous discussion of rights-making claims by Europe's Muslims to the European Court of Human Rights. It combines sociological and legal case analysis which advances understanding of one of the most pressing topical issues of the day.

The significance that people grant to their affiliations as members of nations, religions, classes, races, ethnicities and genders is evidence of the vital need for a cosmopolitan project that originates in the figure of Anyone – the universal and yet individual human being. Cosmopolitanism offers an alternative to multiculturalism, a different vision of identity, belonging, solidarity and justice, that avoids the seemingly intractable character of identity politics: it identifies samenesses of the human condition that underlie the surface differences of history, culture and society, nation, ethnicity, religion, class, race and gender. This book argues for the importance of cosmopolitanism as a theory of human being, as a methodology for social science and as a moral and political program.