2025/06/17 by Nurbanu Hayır · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #European Criminal Justice and Data Protection #European and International Law Studies #Ombudsman and Human Rights
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/13642987.2025.2501574
openalex publication_date 2025/06/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
This article discusses the two competing frames of human rights in European legal and political thoughts that continue to undergird the competing claims on externalised migration control in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR): rights of humans against the European state power (a relational frame) versus human rights of Europeans (a spatial membership frame). Drawing from the case of asylum-seeking visa applicants at a Belgian embassy, M.N. and Others v. Belgium (2020), the article traces the prevalence of the spatial membership frame in the history of the ECtHR and the European consular jurisdiction under capitulation treaties in the eighteenth to nineteenth century to capturing its recurrence in contemporary European human rights thinking on migration. It explores the influence of European interests in colonies during the Convention drafting and in ‘semi-civilised' regions such as the Ottoman Empire, Japan and China on the development of extraterritorial European jurisdiction. These interests shaped a spatial membership frame that prioritised the rights of European nationals, both at home and abroad, while excluding non-nationals from protection despite Europe's expansive sovereignty. It then reflects on how this spatial membership frame influences the ECtHR’s approach to embassies and consulates in human rights law.