When Humans Become Migrants: Study of the European Court of Human Rights with an Inter-American Counterpoint

This book examines the opposing ways in which the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights treat claims lodged by migrants. It combines legal, sociological, and historical analysis to show that the two courts were the product of different backgrounds, which led to differing attitudes to migrants in their founding texts, and that these differences were reinforced in their developing case law. The book assesses the case law of both courts in detail to argue that they approach migrant cases from fundamentally different perspectives. It asserts that the European Court of Human Rights treats migrants first as aliens, and then - but only in a second step of its reasoning - as human beings. By contrast, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights approaches migrants as human beings in the first instance.