{"id":1484,"date":"2024-11-12T11:08:36","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T16:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/?page_id=1484"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:10:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:10:02","slug":"liminal-legality-across-borders-examining-the-migrants-right-to-human-time-on-the-shifting-u-s-mexico-and-turkiya-syria-borders","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-38-issue-3-spring-2024\/liminal-legality-across-borders-examining-the-migrants-right-to-human-time-on-the-shifting-u-s-mexico-and-turkiya-syria-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"Liminal Legality Across Borders: Examining the Migrant’s Right to “Human Time” on the Shifting U.S.-Mexico and T\u00fcrkiye-Syria Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout the modern world, refugee-receiving countries are increasingly externalizing their border procedures and restricting access to asylum\u00a0 to deter long-term migration. Although many of these same countries have\u00a0 obligations under international refugee law to recognize asylum seekers\u2019\u00a0 claims and uphold human rights for those within their jurisdictions<\/span>\u2014<\/span>even\u00a0 along their borders<\/span>\u2014<\/span>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\u00a0 precarious and unsafe conditions for people fleeing violence, persecution,\u00a0 and insecurity. At the same time, as the border has shifted outward, it has\u00a0 also shifted inward as governments have introduced restrictions on asylum\u00a0 and a widening category of statuses that grant humanitarian protection in the short term. Such statuses like temporary protection offer critical safe haven\u00a0 for groups fleeing wars, natural disasters, and other generalized harms.\u00a0 However, as conflict and climate emergencies become ever more protracted\u00a0 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\u00a0 of suspension, endlessly waiting for their statuses to be renewed or revoked\u00a0 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\u2019s options are\u00a0 curtailed by legal status, this suspended state of waiting often invites economic insecurity, social immobility, and even outright unsafety.\u00a0 Although many international human rights treaties recognize rights that\u00a0 give value to the temporal dimension of human life (e.g., the right to leisure\u00a0 time, the right to a speedy trial, the right to not be held in arbitrary detention\u00a0 or prolonged incarceration while awaiting the death penalty), none have explicitly articulated the right to \u201chuman time.\u201d This Note examines this gap in\u00a0 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\u00a0 countries. It investigates the temporal dimensions of legal status using a\u00a0 \u201climinal legality\u201d theoretical framework to explore the limits of international\u00a0 law\u2019s protections for migrants. Comparing two populations who have been\u00a0 on the move for over a decade\u2014Haitians on the U.S.-Mexico border and\u00a0 Syrians on the T\u00fcrkiye-Syria border\u2014it 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\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Continue reading Liminal Legality Across Borders: Examining the Migrant’s Right to “Human Time” on the Shifting U.S.-Mexico and T\u00fcrkiya-Syria Borders<\/a><\/p>\nSonia Geba Article<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the modern world, refugee-receiving countries are increasingly externalizing their border procedures and restricting access to asylum\u00a0 to deter long-term migration. Although many of these same countries have\u00a0 obligations under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14256,"featured_media":0,"parent":1476,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1484","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1501,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1484\/revisions\/1501"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}