Throughout the modern world, refugee-receiving countries are increasingly externalizing their border procedures and restricting access to asylum  to deter long-term migration. Although many of these same countries have  obligations under international refugee law to recognize asylum seekers’  claims and uphold human rights for those within their jurisdictions—even  along their borders—many instead rely on third countries to care for vulnerable populations on the move. This has led to a proliferation of temporary refugee camps and tenuous, informal settlements along borders that create  precarious and unsafe conditions for people fleeing violence, persecution,  and insecurity. At the same time, as the border has shifted outward, it has  also shifted inward as governments have introduced restrictions on asylum  and a widening category of statuses that grant humanitarian protection in the short term. Such statuses like temporary protection offer critical safe haven  for groups fleeing wars, natural disasters, and other generalized harms.  However, as conflict and climate emergencies become ever more protracted  and migrants are displaced for decades and longer, such legal regimes are insufficient to offer the protection they originally intended and instead effectively place migrants in legal limbo, contributing to their further victimization. Recipients of temporary protection in many countries are left in a state  of suspension, endlessly waiting for their statuses to be renewed or revoked  and unable to properly invest in their lives in the long term. Whether experienced on the border in a camp or inside a country where one’s options are  curtailed by legal status, this suspended state of waiting often invites economic insecurity, social immobility, and even outright unsafety.  Although many international human rights treaties recognize rights that  give value to the temporal dimension of human life (e.g., the right to leisure  time, the right to a speedy trial, the right to not be held in arbitrary detention  or prolonged incarceration while awaiting the death penalty), none have explicitly articulated the right to “human time.” This Note examines this gap in  international human rights treaties and specifically engages with an emerging right to human time as it relates to the experiences of migrants on physical borders and temporary protection recipients in refugee-receiving  countries. It investigates the temporal dimensions of legal status using a  “liminal legality” theoretical framework to explore the limits of international  law’s protections for migrants. Comparing two populations who have been  on the move for over a decade—Haitians on the U.S.-Mexico border and  Syrians on the Türkiye-Syria border—it concludes that legal limbo and temporary protection regimes that keep certain groups in suspense for long periods of time with few pathways to long-term residence violate an emerging  canon of international legal norms. For temporary protection to fulfill the aims of international human rights law, this Note argues that governments must reinvigorate their asylum systems and embrace more pathways to long term migration. 

Continue reading Liminal Legality Across Borders: Examining the Migrant’s Right to “Human Time” on the Shifting U.S.-Mexico and Türkiya-Syria Borders