Evaluating the human rights of stateless people: Reflections of Arendt, Agamben, and Ranciere

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2011

Öğrenci: ELÇİN TÜRKDOĞAN

Danışman: CEM DEVECİ

Özet:

As it is widely accepted, human rights are inalienable and equal rights that we have simply because we are human. They are guaranteed to all people regardless of their nationality, race, sex, ethnicity, etc. Moreover, they are rights that their holder cannot lose them temporarily or permanently. Yet, today many millions people around the world are denied to exercise their most basic human rights because they are not citizen of any country. They are stateless people. Although there have been many international human rights mechanisms to protect rights of stateless people, in real life almost all stateless people are still subject to torture, discrimination, xenophobia, racism, difficulty enjoying their social, economic and cultural rights, and arbitrary and indefinite detention. Considering this contradiction, this thesis aims to question the meaning of the existence of stateless people for human rights theory. This issue was firstly studied by Hannah Arendt. Then, her analysis has been developed by many authors in different manners. Two important figures among them are Giorgio Agamben and Jascque Rancière. Thus, this thesis attempts to evaluate the human rights of stateless people in the light of approaches of three authors: Arendt, Agamben, and Rancière. Considering critical power of both of three approaches to human rights in contrast to mainstream theories of human rights, this thesis regards Jascque Rancière’s approach as an explanatory approach for human rights of stateless people since it focuses on political power of human rights for even stateless people.