Open Access Publisher and Free Library
HUMAN RIGHTS.jpeg

HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights-Migration-Trafficking-Slavery-History-Memoirs-Philosophy

Immigration Justice

By Peter Higgins.

The title of this book signifies that immigration policy is not a matter of ethics (understood to refer to the moral analysis of individual action and character), but is rather a matter of justice, and more precisely, structural justice. A central contention of this book is that the justice of an immigration policy can be ascertained only through consideration of the pervasive, systematic, and unjust inequalities engendered by the institutions that constitute our social world. This is because immigration policies affect people not as individuals per se, but as members of social groups that are brought into existence by the ways in which formal rules, informal norms, and stable practices (that is, social institutions) unequally distribute opportunities among those implicated in them. That is to say, the way an immigration policy affects a person is not idiosyncratic, but rather is a function of that person’s gender, race, economic class, sexuality, ability, age, and citizenship status, among other things. What I am asserting here, but will argue for throughout this book, is that one cannot wholly determine whether or not an immigration policy is just in our social world, given its present nature, unless one’s principles for making such assessments treat gender, race, economic class, sexuality, and so on, as salient categories of analysis.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. 281p.

Knowing about Genocide

By Joachim J. Savelsberg

Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles.. “This book brings together the topic of genocide and a comprehensive sociology of knowledge (360 degrees, as one reader suggested). The empirical focus is on the Armenian genocide. I ask how repertoires of knowledge emerge, among Armenians and Turks and in world society, and what dynamics they unfold. Importantly, by knowledge, I do not mean certified knowledge but simply humans’ taken-for-granted assumptions about the world.Everyday exchanges, or micropolitics, lay the foundation. They involve conflicting pressures to silence, deny, or acknowledge. Knowledge entrepreneurs, actors with privileged access to channels of communication, often set the parameters for such exchanges…”

UC Press. (2021) 264 pages.

Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets!

by Sasha Costanza-Chock.

Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement.. From the Foreword: “A key issue in this often blurred debate is the role of communication technologies in the formation, organization, and development of the movements. Throughout history, communication has been central to the existence of social movements, which develop beyond the realm of institutionalized channels for the expression of popular demands. It is only by communicating with others that outraged people are able to recognize their collective power before those who control access to the institutions..”

Creative Commons (2014) 295p.

Vigilantism against Migrants and Minorities

Edited By Tore Bjørgo, Miroslav Mareš.

This edited volume traces the rise of far right vigilante movements – some who have been involved in serious violence against minorities, migrants and other vulnerable groups in society, whereas other vigilantes are intimidating but avoid using violence. Written by an international team of contributors, the book features case studies from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, and Asia.

Routledge (2019) 370 pages.

Justice and Police

By F.W. Maitland.

The English Citizen, His Rights and Responsibilities. “Written for the layman, it is far more than a traditional overview. By discussing justice and police together Maitland offers a stimulating definition of his subject as "those institutions and processes whereby the country's law is enforced" (Preface). "Maitland's study was characterized by an originality of approach, a freedom from academic pretension and a simplicity of style that made it a stimulating and suggestive discussion of the intricacies of criminal law administration in England during the 1st quarter of the nineteenth century.": Columbia Law Review 29:847 cited in Marke, A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University (1953) 190. Widely considered the father of legal history, Frederic William Maitland [1850-1906] was an English jurist and historian best known for the standard The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vols. (1895), written with Sir Frederick Pollock. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge and studied at Lincoln's Inn, London. Maitland was called to the bar in 1876, and practiced until 1884 when he became a reader in English law (1884) and professor (1888) at Cambridge. He founded the Selden Society in 1887. Hailed for his original outlook on history, his works profoundly influenced legal scholarship. An extraordinarily productive career was shortened by his death from tuberculosis at age 45.”

London: Macmillan, 1885. 176p.

Read/Download

Read-Me.Org
Dramatic Days at the Old Bailey

By Charles Kingston.

Here is a taste of the juicy contents: There are 28 chapters in this book...here are just a few of the cases covered: Murderers and Atheism - When Providence did not interpose - Mr. Justice Hawkins and the Old Bailey - From prison governor to convict - A fatal blunder in cross-examination - The elderly orphan - The acquitted murderer who confessed - Great Britain's most remarkable female poisoner - The first of the "Hanging Judges" - The murderer who confessed too soon - Percy Lefroy and his "silk hat " - Perfect Ladies " in the dock - Beauty specialist and blackmailer - Fashionable preacher and forger - The humour of Charles Peace -The late Lord Halsbury and the Old Bailey - Prosecuting the Bidwell brothers - Bribing prison warders - The counsel who ate poisoned cake - A famous case of wife coercion - Some remarkable jewel thefts - Babies for hire - A love romance and a crime - The judge who had a past - Humour in court - Running two West End theatres on stolen money - Comedy and tragedy - The acquittal of Adelaide Bartlett - The judge who resigned rather than pass sentence of death - The repartee of two swindlers - The baby-farmer and the Milsom and Fowler dock fight - Religion and crime - The doctor as criminal - Marrying and murdering for money - Two French sensations - The Edinburgh doctor who forged a patient's will - The clue of the wine bottle.

London Stanley Paul (1929) 342 pages.

FREE Read/Download

Read-Me.Org
Asylum Matters: On the Front Line of Administrative.Decision-Making

By Laura Affolter.

This open access book examines everyday practices in an asylum administration. Asylum decisions are often criticised as being ‘subjective’ or ‘arbitrary’. Asylum Matters turns this claim on its head. Through the ethnographic study of asylum decision-making in the Swiss Secretariat for Migration, the book shows how regularities in administrative practice and ‘socialised subjectivity’ are produced. It argues that asylum caseworkers acquire an institutional habitus through their socialisation on the job, making them ‘carriers’ of routine practices. The different chapters of the book deal with what it means to methodologically study administrative practice: with how asylum proceedings work in Switzerland and with the role different types of knowledge play in overcoming the uncertainties inherent in refugee status and credibility determination.

Springer Nature, 2021. 213p.

Labour Exploitation And Work-Based Harm

By Sam Scott.

“This book argues that it is time to define, and in the process identify solutions to, the problems of labour exploitation and work-based harm. The book is clear that extant legal frameworks are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the successful completion of this task. Put simply, there is a tendency to look at exploitation and harm through a criminological lens. This is fine in so far as it tends to identify extreme forms of coercive exploitation and abuse. However, there are highly complex sets of employment relationships and experiences between the extremes of slavery, on the one hand, and decent work on the other.”

Policy Press (2017) 298p.

Precarious Lives

By Hannah Lewis, Peter Dwyer, Stuart Hodkinson and Louise Waite

Forced labour, exploitation and asylum. “Based on international law, forced labour involves a situation in which a person is forced to work or provide a service under the ‘menace of any penalty’ and for which they have not offered themselves ‘voluntarily’ (ILO, 1930, Article 2). Forced labour cases are deemed to be distinguishable from more generalised forms of labour exploitation by the existence of various forms of coercion by one or more persons on the worker who at the same time lacks a ‘real and acceptable alternative’ to the abuse involved (ILO, 2005, p 21). As this book will demonstrate, while forced labour is often conflated or confused with human trafficking…..”

Policy Press (2019) 234p.

Refugees and the Violence of Welfare Bureaucracies in Northern Europe

Edited by Dalia Abdelhady, Nina Gren, and Martin Joormann.

Given the significant similarities and differences between the welfare states of Northern Europe and their reactions to the perceived 'refugee crisis' of 2015, the book focuses primarily on the three main cases of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Placed in a wider Northern European context – and illustrated by those chapters that also discuss refugee experiences in Norway and the UK – the Danish, Swedish and German cases are the largest case studies of this edited volume. Thus, the book contributes to debates on the governance of non-citizens and the meaning of displacement, mobility and seeking asylum by providing interdisciplinary analyses of a largely overlooked region of the world, with two specific aims.

Manchester University Press, 2020. 244p

Refugee Journeys

Edited by Jordana Silverstein And Rachel Stevens.

Histories of resettlement, representation and resistance. Refugee Journeys presents stories of how governments, the public and the media have responded to the arrival of people seeking asylum, and how these responses have impacted refugees and their lives. Considers possible ways to break existing policy deadlocks, encouraging readers to imagine a future where we carry vastly different ideas about refugees, government policies and national identities.

ANU Press (2021) 258 pages.

Beyond Borders

Edited by Molly Land, Kathryn Libal, Jillian Chambers.

The human rights of noncitizens at home and abroad. Beyond Borders explores what obligations we owe to those outside our political community. Drawing on contributions from a broad variety of disciplines – from literature to political science to philosophy – the volume considers the failures of law and politics to guarantee rights for the most vulnerable and attempts to imagine new forms of belonging grounded in ideas of solidarity, empathy, and responsibility in order to identify a more robust basis for the protection of non-citizens at home and abroad.

Cambridge University Press. (2021) 300 pages.

Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls

By Jean Turner-Zimmermann

An article on the Great “White Slave” Question by Jean Turner-Zimmermann, President of the Chicago Rescue Mission and Woman’s Shelter — and — The Department of Purity and Heredity of the Cook County W. C. T. U. “My sole aim in bringing this little pamphlet to you is to definitely call the attention of the men and women of the Central Western States, and especially those of the City of Chicago into whose hands it may come, to the vicious, thoroughly organized white-slave traffic of to-day, and its attendant, far-reaching, horrible results upon the young man and womanhood of our Land.” (1911) 64 pages.

Refugees Welcome? Understanding the Regional Heterogeneity of Anti-Foreigner Hate Crimes in Germany

By Horst Entorf and Martin Lange.

In this article, we examine anti-foreigner hate crime in the wake of the large influx of asylum seekers to Germany in 2014 and 2015. By exploiting the quasi-experimental assignment of asylum seekers to German regions, we estimate the causal effect of an unexpected and sudden change in the share of the foreign-born population on anti-foreigner hate crime. Our county-level analysis shows that not simply the size of regional asylum seeker inflows drives the increase in hate crime, but the rapid compositional change of the residential population: Areas with previously low shares of foreign-born inhabitants that face large-scale immigration of asylum seekers witness the strongest upsurge in hate crime. Economically deprived regions and regions with a legacy of anti-foreigner hate crimes are also found to be prone to hate crime against refugees. However, when we explicitly control for East–West German differences, the predominance of native-born residents at the local level stands out as the single most important factor explaining the sudden increase in hate crime.

Mannheim: ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, 2019. 54p.

The Organisation of Human Trafficking: A Study of Criminal Involvement in Sexual Exploitation in Sweden, Finland and Estonia

By Cecilia Englund, et al.

In recent years, trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation has become a major issue for politicians, practitioners and researchers. Knowledge and sensitivity have increased and there have been national and international initiatives on various levels, including in the field of crime prevention. However, there are still gaps in our understanding of human trafficking. One main area that may need further study is that of organisations and networks and how they relate to the market in order to maintain the trade. Another issue is whether there is a convergence of legal and illegal markets and whether legal actors are facilitating the trade. For this reason, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, in partnership with the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI) and the Institute of Law at the University of Tartu in Estonia, initiated a study aimed at further examining the structures of criminal networks and organisations involved in trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation, as well as the conditions and factors of the market and the trade in Sweden, Finland and Estonia. The process of trafficking was also studied from recruitment in the source country to the transport of women and girls to the destination country where procuring has occurred. The study was mainly financed by the AGIS programme of the European Commission. This is the final report presenting the results from a survey carried out in the three countries and is intended to describe these issues.

Stockholm: Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, 2008. 192p.

Confronting root causes: forced labour in global supply chains

By Genevieve LeBaron, Neil Howard, Cameron Thibos and Penelope Kyritsis .

It is by now widely recognised that effectively tackling forced labour in the global economy means addressing its ‘root causes’. Policymakers, business leaders and civil society organisations all routinely call for interventions that do so.1-2 Yet what exactly are these root causes? And how do they operate? The two most commonly given answers are ‘poverty’ and ‘globalisation’.3 Although each may be foundational to forced labour, both terms are typically used in nebulous, catch-all ways that serve more as excuses than explanations. Both encompass and obscure a web of decisions and processes that maintain an unjust status quo, while being used as euphemisms for deeper socio-economic structures that lie at the core of the capitalist global economy. The question thus becomes: exactly which aspects of poverty and globalisation are responsible for the endemic labour exploitation frequently described with the terms forced labour, human trafficking or modern slavery? Which global economic processes ensure a constant and low-cost supply of highly exploitable and coerced workers? And which dynamics trigger a demand among businesses for their exploitation, making it possible for them to profit from it? This 12-part report is an attempt to answer these questions in a rigorous yet accessible way. With it, we hope to provide policymakers, journalists, scholars and activists with a road map for understanding the political economy of forced labour in today’s “global value chain world”.

Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute, 2018. 100p.

Women trafficking in Ethiopia and its mitigation; The case of Arsi Zone, Oromiya

By L.M. Wako.

Human trafficking is a persistent global social and economic problem, and part of international organized crime, involving local regional, national, and global agents and networks, and victims whose social characteristics traverse age (as they can be children, youths, or adults) and gender (women and men). Ethiopia is not an exception in this regard, and many disadvantaged Ethiopians have fallen victim to human trafficking. This study focuses on the trafficking of Ethiopian women to the Middle East to work as domestic workers. It documents how some of these trafficked women are recruited and transported, and often subjected to severe abuse, including denial of salary, sleep deprivation, passport confiscation, confinement, and physical and sexual assault. It is recognized that some women actively aim for irregular migration and try their luck, i.e., not all are by definition trafficked. They thereby aim to stay clear of trafficking agents and dependency but most become entangled…

Leiden: Leiden University, 2020. 205p.

Chinese human smuggling in transit

By M.R.J. Soudijn.

Introduction. Although human smuggling is not exclusive to one particular ethnic group, a few notorious incidents have focused much attention on the smuggling of Chinese nationals for years. In June 1993, for example, the cargo ship “Golden Venture” ran aground off the US coast near New York. It carried 286 Chinese illegal immigrants on board. Several drowned when they tried to swim ashore but were overcome by the cold water. The ensuing investigation revealed that conditions on board were abominable and accounts of the horrors the passengers suffered during the journey found their way to the media. In later years similar transports were discovered (Wang, 1996). This drew attention to the smuggling of Chinese people in particular in the United States. The so-called Dover tragedy caused a similar uproar in Europe. On 19 June 2000 a cargo truck was found in Dover containing the bodies of 58 Chinese nationals who had died of suffocation. Only two survived the journey. The investigations and prosecutions that followed exposed a large group of human smugglers in the Netherlands.

Leiden: Leiden University, 2006. 179p.

A Media Analysis of Changes in International Human Trafficking Routes from Nepal

By A. Kharel, S. Bhattarai, P. Aryal, S. Shrestha, P. Oosterhoff, P. and K. Snyder.

This study examined the media portrayal of different actors involved in human trafficking from Nepal to understand the reported changes in international routes of human trafficking from Nepal after 2015. The findings of the study are based on content analysis of 480 news articles published in six national newspapers in Nepal in a five-year period from 2016 to 2020, along with existing literature and interviews with newspaper reporters and editors.

Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2022. 96p.