Doctoral Programme Human Rights and Social Justice

The European Concept of Worker in National Welfare Law. National Responses to Legal Uncertainty as Risk for a Fundamental Freedom of the European Union?

Abstract

Free movement of workers is one of the fundamental freedoms of the European Union. Besides residence rights for migrant workers and their family members, it provides them with a certain degree of financial solidarity. In view of the distinction from conditional freedom of movement for non-working EU migrants, the concept of worker is of particular importance. Nevertheless, this term, which is to be defined autonomously under EU law, is very vague in the Court of Justice’s case law. What is actually intended to include also non-standard forms of employment leads to legal uncertainty, which in turn gives Member States leeway to exclude ‘unwanted’ groups of migrant workers from social welfare benefits.

By using a comparative case study on access to social assistance for marginal employed migrant workers in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, this dissertation project analyses how (different) Member States are responding to the legal uncertainty surrounding the concept of worker. Furthermore it attempted to show the impact of varying national definitions of a European concept on migrant workers on the one hand, and on the EU’s freedom of movement law in general on the other. To this end, legal and social science methods will be combined to obtain an in-depth overview of both the legal framework (law in books) and the practical application of these regulations or practical interpretations of the concept of worker at local level (law in action). Based on the results, necessary and/or possible recommendations for political action will be developed.

To the profile of Jana Bub

Ecological Sustainability in the Age of Neoliberalism: Environmental justice and socioeconomic transformation in the borderland of Bangladesh

Abstract

My research is located at the interstices of Indigenous studies, ecological transformation, and environmental vulnerability in a borderland region of South Asia, known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). This area is inhabited by 13 different Indigenous ethnic groups with different languages and cultures (Roy, 2000, p. 19; Ahsan & Chakma, 1989, p. 960), some of whom also reside on both sides of the India/Bangladesh national borders. Like indigenous peoples elsewhere, the indentities, and cultural orientations of these communities are deeply rooted in nature (Jasimuddin & Inoue 2012, p. 121) and their livelihoods and cultures mostly depend on natural subsistence (alam et al. 2019; Baten et al. 2010, p.5 and Rasul 2007). In the last few decades, neoliberal forces have entered and are affecting the ecology of the region, causing changes in the relationship of Indigenous peoples with the nature. This research will attempt to observe the significant effects of neoliberalism on ecology, and as a consequence, on Indigenous peoples' changing perceptions towards the nature. To understand this phenomenon, I will use a political and ecological lens and engage with a Marxist ecological framework to understand the process of marginalisation of Indigenous peoples and environmental justice. My research is mainly based on ethnographic approaches, including observation, focus group discussions, and interviews. Thus, this study will add empirical value on the potential theme on "[environmental] degradation and marginalization" (Benjaminsen, 2015, p. 363) as well as contribute to the theoretical debates on the nexus among neoliberalism, Indigenous peoples, and natural resources. This project aims to expand our understanding of how state and market forces are marginalising Indigenous peoples of the peripheries by systematically destroying their ecology.

To the profile of Rigan Chakma

After Violence - Insights into interaction dynamics in post-escalatory scenarios

Abstract

On January 6, 2021, thousands of demonstrators entered the US Capitol. In political and media discourse, the event was quickly framed as a clear instance of large-scale political violence. A close examination of available video footage, however, reveals a more complex picture: phases of intense confrontation and destruction are followed by abrupt shifts toward disorientation, exploration, and the situational negotiation of rules. This study analyses such transitions in the immediate aftermath of collective violence from a praxeological and interactionist perspective. Methodologically, it combines video analysis with thick descriptions of key scenes to trace processes of re-ordering, fragmentation, and situational meaning-making. While the Capitol storm serves as the main case, comparative vignettes – including the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg – broaden the analysis to recurring patterns and ruptures in collective dynamics.

To the profile of Christina Fischer

Precarious Solidarity – An Ethnographic Case Study of Collective Resistance and Organization among Georgian Seasonal Farmworkers in Germany

Abstract

This patchwork ethnographic dissertation project examines how collective practices of resistance and organization emerge among seasonal farmworkers within the German agricultural labor migration regime. Taking labor conflict as its analytical point of departure, the dissertation focuses on – and collaborates with – a group of Georgian seasonal farmworkers recruited through the first German-Georgian seasonal worker agreement who engaged in a variegated, multi-year labor struggle. This is in order to analyze how these workers engaged in resistance and collective organization in the face of the hegemonic, atomizing conditions of exploitation and domination. The multi-scalar inquiry analytically interweaves the novel, logistified third-country migration-governance initiative with the workers’ transnational engagement with German and Georgian trade unions, state institutions, and civil society actors, as well as their practices at the site of production.

Biopolitical Futures and the Art of Governance in the Anthropocene - Ecological Posthumanism and the Knowledge of the Subject/Object of a New Earth Age

Abstract

The social, cultural and humanities debate on the Anthropocene - the new geological age proclaimed by geologists in which man (Greek anthropos) becomes a planetary force of nature - has managed an unexpected return of anthropological statements. Contrary to the dominant social constructivism and endowed with political relevance by the phenomenon of the Anthropocene, posthuman, relational and post-anthropocentric anthropologies in particular are enjoying increasing popularity.

The envisaged doctoral project reads these posthumanist debates, whose central commonality lies in the decentring of the human being - analogous to Foucault's analysis of the human and life sciences - as a biopolitical discourse of truth, whose bodies of knowledge represent a power-knowledge on demand. The research interest passes through the exploration of the emancipatory potentials of a posthumanist biopolitics in the Anthropocene, which, while still far from occupying the spaces of power, sets out to transform the way they function.

The methodological approach of this work, which passes through a discourse analysis of this precarious knowledge of power, follows from this objective and from the preoccupation with theoretical debates as discourses of truth. The aim is to identify both emancipative potentials and dangers for regressive relapses.

This work thus not only opens up a self-reflexive perspective on social and cultural sciences knowledge production, but also a starting point for an explorative analysis of alternative futures of an art of governing in the Anthropocene. In this sense, this work asks neither "what is?" nor "what will be?", but rather "what if?" and thus counters the omnipresent closure of the future - whether imagined as apocalypse or world salvation.

To the profile of Tom Scheunemann

The doctoral research group "Human Rights and Social Justice" deals with current academic and socio-politically relevant issues in the field of critical social science and (socio-)legal human rights and justice research. We assume an interdependent and multi-layered problem constellation within which Western democracy and its concepts of freedom are in crisis (Wahl and Klein 2010; Amlinger and Nachtwey 2022), social polarisation effects are increasingly spreading in a violent manner (Münch 2023; Höffe 2015; Mason 2022), the claim to universalism of human rights is being renegotiated (Mende 2021; Benhabib 2016; Barreto 2013; Maldonado-Torres 2017) and the relationship between humans and their natural environment is being re-examined in the context of the climate crisis (Latour 2020; 2017; Haraway 2016). In the course of this crisis-ridden dynamic, the limits and sovereign suspension of law are encountering struggles for access to law. Critical perspectives in practice and theory point to the unredeemed nature of the universalist self-claim of human rights. The topic of human rights is thus once again being discussed with regard to the question of "the human being" as a potential legal subject (Celermajer and Lefebvre 2020).

This gives rise to the need to research both the possibilities and horizons as well as the limits of social justice on the one hand and the legal implementation and socio-political enforcement of human rights on the other in a way that is both applied and related to practice. In doing so, the work of the colleague takes into account the need to consider (international) human rights and their violations from a variety of disciplinary, theoretical and conceptual perspectives (Kaul and Kim 2015) and to examine their constitution, contexts of justification and substance (Donnelly 2020). The focus on social justice should not only serve as a further empirical framework for investigation, but can also enrich the idea of a socially just society as a normative orientation aid, "in which all people have largely equal access to the material and social resources necessary to manage a fulfilling life" (Wright 2010, 8). (Wright 2010, 8). It is important to think about this normative orientation in terms of its internal contradictions and ambivalences.

The research interest is thematically framed by the current challenges to democracy derived from this diagnosis in the wake of the climate crisis and the violent public sphere, questions of legal (in)equality and unequal access to institutions of law, as well as the search for distributive justice and possibilities of solidarity. The research carried out at the doctoral research group focuses on the individual doctoral projects of the doctoral candidates, which deal with the topics of human rights and social justice in mutual exchange and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Literature

Amlinger, Carolin; Nachtwey, Oliver (2022): Gekränkte Freiheit: Aspects of libertarian authoritarianism. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Barreto, José-Manuel (ed.) (2013): Human Rights from a Third World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Celermajer, Danielle; Lefebvre, Alexandre (eds.) (2020): The Subject of Human Rights. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Benhabib, Seyla (2016): Cosmopolitanism without illusions: Human Rights in Troubled Times. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Donnelly, Jack (2020): The Concept of Human Rights. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne (2016): Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Experimental Futures: Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices. Durham: Duke University Press.

Höffe, Otfried (2015): Critique of Freedom: The Fundamental Problem of Modernity. Munich: C.H. Beck.

Kaul, Susanne; Kim, David (eds.) (2015): Imagining Human Rights, Boston: De Gruyter.

Latour, Bruno (2020): The terrestrial manifesto. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2017): On the Coloniality of Human Rights. In: Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 114: 117-36.

Mason, Paul (2022): Fascism: and how to stop it. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Mende, Janne (2021): The universalism of human rights. Munich: UVK Verlag.

Münch, Richard (2023): Polarised society The postmodern struggles for identity and participation. Frankfurt: Campus.

Wahl, Peter; Klein, Dieter (eds.) (2010): Demokratie und Krise - Krise der Demokratie. Berlin: Dietz.

Wright, Erik Olin (2010): Envisioning Real Utopias. New York: Verso.