Magdalena Kmak’s research while affiliated with Åbo Akademi University and other places

This article analyses the relationship between security- and vulnerability-based reasoning in the interpretation of extraterritorial human rights obligations, taking the repatriation of adult Finnish women from the al-Hol Camp as an example. It discusses the function of vulnerabilization and securitization as qualification tools within human rights law to manage access to rights protection establishing a theoretical framework of deservingness. Fundamentally, the article argues that states often approach the human rights of those who have put themselves and others at risk differently from the human rights of those who are recognized as vulnerable. The women in al-Hol have often been the objects of othering and stereotyping, and the question of their vulnerability has largely escaped attention. Through the example of these women, the article illustrates how deserving and undeserving identities are constructed in societal discussions and in international human rights law.

The aim of this article is to shift the focus from legal discourses on refugees rooted in victimization/securitization narrative, which dominate in the EU, to an alternative perspective on the relationship between refugeeness and law. Instead of the state-centred law’s discourse and its impact on the development of refugee subjectivities, the article turns to explore a refugees’ perspectives on law. After briefly discussing the dominant narratives as embedded in legal changes initiated during and after the so-called ‘migration and refugee crisis’ in the EU, the article turns to analysis of alternative narratives on migrants and refugees, in particular the narrative of generativity taking it beyond the constraints of methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism. In particular, the article discusses the impact of exile experience on conceptualization of the figure of the refugee by looking at work of scholars exiled from Nazi Germany in the 1930s: Hannah Arendt, Louise Holborn and Otto Kirchheimer. The analysis shows the importance of shifting perspectives – from the primacy of statehood and law to the primacy of the figure of the refugee – to gain more insight into the situatedness of law and its development in the context of asylum and mobility.

This article studies emotions of students in light of the concept of clinical legal education and its pedagogy. It takes as its case study the Helsinki Law Clinic. The study shows that emotions constitute an important aspect of academic learning and they often guide students through the learning experience. The design of the course and the scope of the teachers’ involvement have a significant impact on emotions experienced by students and, through these emotions, on students’ motivation. The study showed that students who struggle with group work most and have negative emotions towards the collaborative setting of the course exhibited a perfectionist attitude. Students who express a more positive attitude towards group work expressed greater emotional satisfaction with both the course and their own performance, and received better grades. Those students who have indicated orientation towards performance and stressed the importance of passing examinations were most dissatisfied with group work. These findings show the importance of the role of teachers in regulating students’ emotions through guiding their work and continuously explaining the purpose of clinical education as more oriented towards collaborative problem-solving and learning by doing rather than as an exam to be passed.

This article engages with the legal and political discourses aiming to respond to the increasing presence of undocumented migrants in the European Union. It focuses on legal consequences of the discursive framing often portraying undocumented migrants as a group ‘unworthy of social, economic, and political rights’ as opposed to those considered genuine refugees. The article explores the opening brought by the group approach to undocumented migrants and asks whether such a group perspective could be used as a basis for recognition of group-based rights of undocumented migrants. With reference to Jacques Rancière’s conception of dissensus the article discusses the arbitrariness, inadequacy and historical contingency of legal categories of migrants and minorities in international human rights law and focuses on the existing openings in the minority protection standards in international and regional instruments. These include the strong non-discrimination focus of minority protection; the ongoing process of broadening of the minority protection encompassing also non-citizens; and the alternative theories of minority protection. Such an approach allows for experimenting with existing legal categories approaching the rights of undocumented migrants from the minority protection perspective, revealing their rigidity and dependence on the nation-state system.

The article examines the rationality behind the simultaneous enhancement and restriction of mobility of various categories of migrants in the European Union. Through Foucauldian understanding of economic man as a dominant subjectivity in neoliberal risk society, the article shows how the European migration law produces two types of economic men: EU citizens and bogus asylum seekers. Whereas migration of EU citizens is considered not only rational but also moral behaviour, migration of those perceived as bogus asylum seekers is condemned as immoral and irrational. This differing approach towards EU citizens on the one hand, and asylum seekers on the other, constitutes a mode of governing migration in the EU referred in this article as technology of morality.

In recent years, multiculturalism has been declared a failure both in Europe and the Anglophone West. This diagnosis went hand in hand with an excessive focus on gendered cultural practices in culturally diverse societies, such as forced marriages or 'honour killings'; the raise of anti-immigration political movements and the adoption of stricter legal rules in the areas of immigration and citizenship. This article aims to capture the legal, social and political responses to 'failed' multiculturalism under the banner of post-multiculturalism. In doing so, it identifies the major shifts that characterises post-multiculturalism and discusses their implications particularly for the citizens of Europe and various 'others'. A close analysis of the recent shifts in the areas of rights, migration law and policy debates in various culturally diverse societies reveal that post-multiculturalism reinforces rather than counteracts the problematic features of multiculturalism. Drawing on the insights suggested by the literature on neo-liberal governmentality, the article points out the paradoxes of post-multiculturalism and their implications for culturally different Others.