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Human
Rights and Citizenship: The Case of Mexican Migrants in Canada
by Tanya Basok, University of Windsor, Working Paper No. 72 April
2003 - tratto da CCIS
THE CENTER FOR COMPARATIVE IMMIGRATION STUDIES
Abstract: According to several
scholars, the emergence of supra-national human rights institutions
have caused a fundamental shift from national citizenship (a nation-based
notion of rights) to post-national citizenship )a more individual-based
universal conception of rights based on an international human rights
regime). The notion of "postnational citizenship" has been challenged
by many researchers who have argued that universal principles of
human rights cannot be implemented and enforced without the consent
of nation-states. Although nation-states have demonstrated a certain
degree of respect for universal principles, their commitment to
the ideas of post-national citizenship are based on a conception
of citizenship rooted in membership in a particular bound community.
The two notions of citizenship--one linked to inclusive universal
rights and the other to membership in an exclusive community--are
at times contradictory. Using the case of Mexican migrants working
in Canada, this presentation will emphasize the difference between
rights as a set of principles and laws on the one hand, and their
actual practice and implementation on the other. Basok will argue
that whereas legal access to economic rights has been extended to
non-citizens residing in the national territory of sovereign nation-states,
membership in the national community has often been denied to them,
thus precluding them from exercising the rights to which they have
been granted legal access.
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