Unfinished globalization: the failure to address colonialism's legacy in international human rights and migration governance

Abstract

The post-World War II era of International Law was prolific in generating intricate and complex processes of advancing human rights through the creation of norms and agencies, framing the protection of individuals in major human rights documents. Most of these instruments were incorporated at State level to predominantly protect the nationals and  legal civilians. This perspective is e still very attached to the territorial dimension of State Sovereignty. Therefore, in terms of governance e, the International System fails to advance the process of decolonization as historically overcoming colonialism, and not only a process of legally addressing the emancipation of colonies, but of breaking the paradigm of the power dynamics  in its very structures, for no major international mechanisms were created to overcome the colonial advantage within International Organizations - and this reflects on the institutional dynamics of specialized agencies and subsidiary organs of the UN, such as the UNHCR, designated to work with refugees, as some of these were not designed to last more than its original mandate. Additionally, in the last decades, with the expanded flow of information, goods and services, no such expansion was allowed when it comes to migrants. The figure of the migrant rises as much more interesting to the economic system as being undocumented, differently from the protected civilian. Since most economic migrants and refugees are from the Global South, it might imply an unfinished globalization process, as the system itself feeds on this colonial logic, promoting this figure of the illegal migrant to nourish itself from it. Saskia Sassen and Anne Orford will bring light on this matter, about how economic globalization depends on the current international division of labor and migration, exploiting these migrants, because this deprivation of rights that renders them undocumented is the necessary condition for their labor exploitation.