Against labour dispossession A philosophical critique of the legal normalisation of undocumented migrants' exploitation in Europe

This doctoral dissertation undertakes a legal-philosophical investigation into the role of the European human rights regime in normalising legal structures that expose undocumented migrants to severe exploitation. It combines law and critical (migration) theory to examine the logic and functioning of regulations governing the residence and labour relations of undocumented migrants from both internal and external perspectives. It analyses the European Union’s Return and Sanctions Directives, along with a selection of landmark ECtHR judgments on the regularisation of undocumented migrants’ status and their protection against slavery, servitude, and forced labour. The dissertation introduces the term ‘il-legal alien’ to underscore the role of law in constructing and maintaining conditions of illegality and alienage. It situates its analyses within the broader context of the political economy of irregular migration under global capitalism and the market’s increasing deemand for cheap labour.
The dissertation demonstrates that prevailing interpretations of European human rights laws reinforce and normalise structures of exploitability against il-legal aliens. It argues that these individuals are transformed into ‘pseudo-legal’ persons who lack the legal capacity to establish valid employment relationships. The illegalisation of their labour relations operates through a logic of ‘dispossession’, stripping them of the ability to autonomously control their bodily labour power. The dissertation shows that legal structures functioning under this logic bear similarities to legal regimes of slavery. The disserttaion highlights the liberatory potential of the right to unionisation, which could serve as the foundation for il-legal aliens’ collective struggle to reclaim their human right to work, independent of their residence status, in post-slavery Europe.