Table Of ContentDisplacement, Asylum, Migration
Kate E. Tunstall is Fellow and Tutor in French
at Worcester College, Oxford
The Oxford Amnesty Lectures is a registered charity. Its
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Amnesty International.
Displacement,
Asylum,
Migration
The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2004
Edited by
Kate E. Tunstall
1
3
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Preface
The lectures on which this book is based were originally
given in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in January and
February 2004. I should like to express my gratitude to all
the lecturers––Slavoj Zizek, Bhikhu Parekh, Caryl Phillips,
Saskia Sassen, Harold Hongju Koh, Jacqueline Rose, and Ali
Mazrui––for coming to speak in Oxford and for giving us
permission to publish their lectures in aid of Amnesty Inter-
national. I am grateful to Matthew Gibney for writing a piece
for this volume, though he did not lecture in the series. I
should like also to thank the respondents––Michael Ignatieff,
Seyla Benhabib, Elleke Boehmer, Christian Joppke, Rey
Koslowski, Ali Abunimah, Iftikhar Malik, and Melissa Lane––
for their contributions to this book.
Thanks are also due, as ever, to the other members of
the Oxford Amnesty Lectures Committee without whose
hard work there would be no lectures and no book. They
are Tim Chesters, Melissa McCarthy, Chris Miller, Nick
Owen, Fabienne Pagnier, Deana Rankin, Richard Scholar,
Stephen Shute, and Wes Williams.
K. E. T.
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Contents
Contributors ix
Epigraph xiii
Introduction 1
kate e. tunstall
Part One: Human Rights 15
1. Finding a Proper Place for Human Rights 17
bhikhu parekh
Response by Seyla Benhabib 44
2. Against an Ideology of Human Rights 56
slavoj zizek
Response by Michael Ignatieff 86
3. Strangers in our Midst: In Search of Seven Pillars of
Wisdom 92
ali a. mazrui
Response by Iftikhar H. Malik 127
Part Two: Displacement, Asylum, Migration 137
4. ‘A Thousand Little Guantanamos’: Western States
and Measures to Prevent the Arrival of Refugees 139
matthew j. gibney
Response by Melissa Lane 170
contents
5. The Repositioning of Citizenship and Alienage:
Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics 176
saskia sassen
Response by Christian Joppke 204
6. Border Crossings 210
caryl phillips
Response by Elleke Boehmer 226
7. The New Global Slave Trade 232
harold hongju koh
Response by Rey Koslowski 256
8. Displacement in Zion 264
jacqueline rose
Response by Ali Abunimah 291
Endnotes 301
Index 345
viii
Contributors
Ali Abunimah is a writer and commentator on the Middle
East and Arab–American affairs. He is Researcher in Social
Policy at the University of Chicago and Co-Founder of the
Electronic Intifada.
Seyla Benhabib is Eugene Meyer Professor of Political
Science and Philosophy at Yale. Her books include The
Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (1996), The Claims of
Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (2003), and The
John Seeley Memorial Lectures, The Rights of Others: Aliens,
Residents and Citizens (2004).
Elleke Boehmer is the Hildred Carlile Professor in Litera-
tures in English at Royal Holloway, University of London,
and author of Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant
Metaphors (1995) and Empire, the National and the Postcolonial:
1890–1920: Resistance in Interaction (2002). Her fictional writing
includes Bloodlines (2000), and she recently edited Robert
Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in
Good Citizenship (2004).
Matthew J. Gibney is Elizabeth Colson Lecturer in Forced
Migration at Oxford University, and author of The Ethics and
Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees
(2004).
Michael Ignatieff is Director of the Carr Centre for Human
Rights Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, at
Harvard University. His books include The Needs of Strangers:
