Uma defesa da migração como direito humano: problemas, desafios e tarefas

This paper puts forward a defense of migration and asylum rights in a human rights-based perspective, with the recent refugee crisis in Europe as a backdrop. It pinpoints: 1) some of the problems (failure of the Westphalian paradigm, lack of effectiveness of International Law and of solidarity of many peoples, including and above all the European people); 2) challenges, such as the attempt to uncouple political representation and the attribution of rights from national citizenship; and 3) possible tasks that might put us on that way – i.e., the transnationalization of the public sphere and a stronger pedagogy of human rights. Today, spelling out the goal in these terms might be tantamount to a utopia. However, going from ideal theory towards a possible implementation obviously hinges on our capacity to break down the ideal in partially fulfillable tasks. If possible, the realization of this goal would obviously entails a top-down solution that would grant international law greater effectiveness, but one which would probably never be attained without the pressure of bottom-up processes, that is, of the global public opinion.