We are very honoured to announce that Jordan Dez will defend her dissertation ‘The Political Rights of Migrants: Undocumented Migrant Politics as Human Rights-making Practice’ on Thursday 8 May 2025 at 13:45. The public ceremony will take place in the Aula of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam) and will last approximately one hour. It will be followed by a reception with drinks at the same location.
Please note that the defence will start at 13:45 sharp and that it will not be possible to enter or leave during the ceremony. It will also be possible to follow the defence via a live stream at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/VUBeadlesOffice
We warmly invite everyone who is interested to join us for this event!
Curious to dive into Jordan Dez’s work? This abstract offers a glimpse into her dissertation:
Undocumented migrants face incomplete human rights protection, both in law and in practice. Hannah Arendt argued that they lack a right to have rights - a political voice and political community to claim their rights through and against. Though Arendt’s challenge remains relevant (almost 75 years later), both human rights and migrant politics are in a different era. How do human rights affect migrant politics and how do migrant politics affect human rights?
To answer these questions, Dez conducted legal research about the political rights of migrants and ethnographic research with undocumented migrant activists to understand the relationship between the political activity of undocumented migrants and the effectiveness of human rights law.
This research concluded that the legal analysis of migrant political rights must be centered around the political activities that non-citizens engage in: voting from abroad; voting locally; demonstrations. Further, effective interpretation of undocumented migrant rights-subject must be contextualized to her experience as a deportable person.
There is much at stake here, as this research also concluded that the political activity of migrants is 'rights-making'. Human rights are not only granted by the state, they are made by the activities of people, including migrants. Particularly, this research shows that through organizing individuals and groups are: (1) seen as rights-subjects (i.e., people who have rights) by the state - they make 'rights-subjectivity; (2) they create effective access to rights, such as health care, education, or labour rights; and (3) they can impact the scope and content of human rights law.
On this third aspect of rights-making, Dez shows how empirical legal scholarship on the use of rights can be incorporated into a legal analysis of the scope of rights.
The theory of 'rights-making' proposed herein is relevant not only for migrants, but for everyone. Human rights are not merely for the state to protect, they are for all of us to use.
The methodological development proposed here shows to judges how to incorporate empirical data within a human rights legal analysis. The discussion of human rights maximalization is also relevant for municipalities looking to fulfill their obligations under human rights law.
The legal interpretation of migrant political rights herein is relevant for lawyers by exploring the potential of migrant rights that are seldom litigated and further proposing a methodology for obscure interpretations of human rights law.
Please find more information about Jordan’s dissertation on this page.
Supervisors:
- Thomas Spijkerboer
- Lieneke Slingenberg
Co-supervisor:
- Martijn Stronks
