"Other" by law: migration, exclusion, and naturalizing discourses of citizenship and rights

Abstract

In the often heated debates around migration in present-day Europe, dehumanising discourses of othering serve to naturalise exclusion, justify discrimination and galvanise xenophobia. While rights based approaches are needed to redress these problems, this approach is itself vulnerable also discriminatory practices insofar as it fails to address the impasse created by the subordination of human rights to the rights of citizens. This article presents the operation of othering discourses in two current areas of public attention in Norway - the provision of health care to irregular migrants, and the intermittent presence of visiting beggars from Romania and other East Europeans in Norwegian cities. The way of seeing implied in the term respect - whose etymological root is to see again, to see anew in a different way - is presented as a basic requirement of any truly inclusive human rights based approach to contemporary social problems.