v1 n1: Nayak on the Paradoxes of Migrants’ Human Rights

Negotiating the Paradoxes of Migrants’ Human Rights, by Meghana V. Nayak

A COMMENTARY ON S. Abji (2018), “Postnational Acts of Citizenship: How an Anti-Border Politics Is Shaping Feminist Spaces of Service Provision in Toronto, Canada,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20(4): 501–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2018.1480901

Abstract: Salina Abji’s work examines feminist service providers who work with non- status migrant survivors of gender violence. While these advocates assist their clients in accessing state rights, they also challenge the state’s right to decide who belongs. I offer a critical reading that suggests two key contributions of her essay. First, she illustrates the intersection of multiple paradoxes of human rights that are too often analyzed separately, and second, she shows how activists negotiate the tensions produced by the contradictions of human rights. I also draw on her scholarship to think about advocate-migrant relationships and the role of indigenous feminist politics.

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Meghana Nayak, PhD is Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at Pace University, focuses on the gender violence, migration politics, and feminist international relations theory, and is author of Who is Worthy of Protection? Gender-Based Asylum and US Immigration Politics (Oxford University Press).