The Continuing Relevance of the Convention?

• Published in: Law and critique 2016-04, Vol.27 (1), p.9-12
• Main Author: Everson, Michelle
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Border stations; Cultural Studies; Economic development; Economics; Education; Gender Studies; Globalization; Human Rights; International relations; Legal History; Migrants; Philosophy; Philosophy of Law; Sociology of law; Theories of Law
• ISSN: 0957-8536; 1572-8617
• DOI: 10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = Law Critique (2016) 27:912 DOI 10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8 Michelle Everson1 Published online: 22 December 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 If people were money: writing over 30 years ago, Goodin and Barry pointed to a then already visible paradox.1 Whereas the modern economy was becoming global, increasingly being rooted in the free movement of capital across borders, free cross-border movement was still denied to peoples. Where the economic steering capacities of the modern state have been severely curtailed and where economic success is measured in terms of competitive capability, labour exibilityat its core, labour mobilitytakes on its own distributive function, acting not only as competitive motor, but also as arbiter for allocative efciency, or in modern judicial thinking, as a harbinger for allocative justice.3 Far outside the reach of the Refugee Convention (1951), post-national law has accordingly had its own disintegrative impacts upon traditional mechanisms of sovereign national border control, for example, redening cross-border migrants as 1 Barry and Goodin (1992); see, in particular chapter 2, and the chapter by Strange. 2 See, for example, Article 63 TFEU, or the Doha round of the WTO. 3 See, for full details, Everson (2013). & Michelle [e-mail] 1 School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10978-015-9174-8&domain=pdf Web End = The Continuing Relevance of the Convention? 123 10 M. Everson economic service providers who might carry their own home regimes of social and economic rights with them when passing across national borders within the EU.4 Migrants are in no small part seen as catalyst for economic development and eco