Call for Papers Minerva Center for Human Rights, Israel : HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE IN IMMIGRATION

30.7.2008

The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem is organizing
an international conference designed to examine various normative
aspects of immigration
regimes with an emphasis on the Israeli immigration regime. The
conference will examine
actual arrangements for immigration in Israel and other countries, and
will explore what
could be considered desirable universal arrangements for immigration,
taking into account
the cultural as well as the economic interests of both potential
immigrants and their hosts.
The conference will be the culmination of the work of an
interdisciplinary research group on
these issues, which has been working together at the Minerva Center
since early 2007.
The conference is scheduled for 25-27 May 2009, and will take place in
Jerusalem. Recipients
of this Call for Papers are invited to submit proposals to present a
paper at the conference.
Authors of the selected proposals will be offered flight expenses to
Israel and
accommodations for the three days of the conference.
Invited speakers who have already confirmed their participation include
Prof. Rainer
Baubock (European University Institute), Prof. Joseph Carens (University
of Toronto) and
Prof. Ayelet Shachar (University of Toronto).

Purpose of the Conference:

Utilizing Israel as the primary test case, the conference aims to
examine three main, broadly
applicable issues related to immigration, human rights and justice:
1. Normative questions pertaining to the rights of people who immigrate
to nation states
with strong ethno-cultural identity, and the use of immigration policy
as a method of
changing or maintaining an internal demographic situation;
2. The relationships between states and their respective diasporas;
3. The implications of considerations of global justice in the domains
of culture and economic
welfare for immigration.
We also are interested in discussing the adequacy of the rights
discourse in general and the
human rights discourse in particular for addressing these issues.

Background:

Israel was established as a result of ideologically-motivated
immigration of Jews to Palestine
and officially regards such immigration as a principle of utmost
importance in determining
national policies. During the war that erupted at the end of the British
mandate over
Palestine, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were uprooted from
their homes
within Israel and were not allowed to return. A similar number of Jews
left Arab countries in
the region. However, since 1991 Israel has become a country which in
actual practice also
allows some non-Jewish immigration. One reason for this change was the
collapse of the
Soviet Union and the mass immigration to Israel of Soviet non-Jewish
relatives of Jews who,
under Israel's Law of Return, are granted the same immigration rights as
Jews. A second
reason for the arrival of many non-Jews in Israel has been
economically-motivated labor
migration, which began in the early 1990's. Israel's developed economy,
and the limitations it
imposed on the employment of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories
since the
beginning of the Palestinian uprising (the Intifada) in the late 1980s,
paved the way for this
labor migration from developing countries. Recently, several thousand
African refugees
from Darfur, Eritrea and other areas entered Israel through its border
with Egypt. The
outpour of refugees from African countries may well be a third source of
non-Jewish
immigrants to Israel in the future.

Israel is an important test case for exploring normative questions
pertaining to the rights of
people who immigrate to nation states with strong ethno-cultural
identity. While it regards
itself as the Jewish nation state and as a country of immigration, this
applies to Jewish
immigrants only. In practice, however, it has become a country which
also allows the
immigration of non-Jews. The Israeli test case also raises the broader
political question of
using immigration as a method of changing or maintaining domestic
demographic policy.
The presence of a large group of non-Jewish immigrants in Israel also
makes various issues
pertaining to the status of its Arab minority more urgent, for this
minority is not an
immigrant minority but rather a homeland minority living in a state
which conceives itself as
the nation state belonging to a different nation. Moreover, the history
of the conflict, as well
as economic discrepancies between Israel and its neighbours, establish
an incentive for many
non-Israeli Palestinians to immigrate to Israel and acquire legal status
within it. Often, such
people marry Israelis and then ask for family unification with them in
Israel. It is important
to examine the status of the Arab minority in relation to that of Jews
on the one hand, and to
that of the non-Jewish new immigrants, on the other hand. Israel has
recently imposed
limitations on the rights of Israeli citizens to unite with family
members from the Palestinian
territories and enemy countries. Naturally, these limitations affect
mainly the Israeli Arab
population. They are controversial within Israel, have been upheld by
the Israeli Supreme
Court by a narrow 6 to 5 vote, and are again pending before the Court.

Israel is also an especially good case for developing a theory of
immigration because of the
phenomenon of diasporas. The phenomenon of diasporas, which for most of
the last two and
a half millennia was almost uniquely Jewish, has in the last decades
become common to
many other cultural groups. Israel regards itself as the nation-state
not only of the Jews living
in it, but also as the nation-state of the Jewish diaspora. The
immigration of non-Jewish
ethno-cultural groups to Israel in the last fifteen years - who might
eventually come to regard
themselves one day as diaspora of other nations - puts to test the
current component of
Israel's self-perception, for it might become not only the nation state
of Jewish diasporas, but
the host state for non-Jewish diasporas.

Another issue for which Israel could serve as an interesting test case
is the role immigration
could play in the realm of global justice. Jürgen Habermas has argued
that First World states
have an obligation to absorb Third World immigrants as one way of
compensating them for
the evils of colonialism. Zionism has justified the Jewish immigration
to Palestine that
facilitated the establishment of the State of Israel by resorting to
arguments of historical,
remedial justice stemming from the persecution of the Jews. Present-day
immigration of Jews
to Israel is sometimes justified by the same individual interests
justifying the non-historical
right of nations to self-determination. Although the Zionist and Israeli
arguments justifying
Jewish immigration resort to global justice in the political-cultural
sphere (whereas
Habermas' and the other arguments resort to what could be called the
political-economic
sphere of global justice), it seems worthwhile to study the similarities
and differences
between these considerations with regard to immigration.

We therefore believe that these Israeli issues can serve as powerful
test cases for the
examination of immigration issues more generally; and that international
perspectives on
immigration may illuminate important dimensions of the local issues. In
sum, we expect that
a discussion structured in this way may be illuminating and useful for
both Israelis and for
scholars of immigration in other countries and in the international arena.

Submission of Proposals:
Researchers interested in addressing these topics (either theoretically,
or in the context of
Israel or other countries) are invited to respond to this call for
papers with a one-page
proposal for an article and presentation, along with a brief CV.

Proposals should be submitted no later than 1 September 2008, by e-mail
to the Minerva
Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(mchr@savion.huji.ac.il).
Proposals will be selected by 1 October 2008 and all applicants should
receive notification by
this date.

Short written papers (of approximately 8-10 pages) based on the selected
proposals will be
expected by 20 April 2009.

Full-length papers based on presentations made at the conference will be
considered by the
organizers for inclusion in a book or law journal symposium to be
published following the
conference.
Conference Academic Committee:
Prof. Chaim Gans, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Ruth Gavison, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. Yuval Shany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Gila Stopler, Academic Center of Law & Business, Ramat Gan