Dissertation

Equal Rights, Unequal Access: Citizenship, State Capacity and Access to Social Rights for Ethnic Minorities in Europe and South America

Bennett, Natasha Amparo

2018

Overview

The international human rights regime sets out to safeguard human rights and human dignity through an international architecture designed to protect vulnerable populations. Yet, those populations who have the most to benefit from an extensive human rights regime, face some of the greatest difficulties in accessing the institutions designed to protect them. Marginality and human rights appear incompatible because marginalized groups fall out of the purview of state-based human rights protection and fulfillment. While much of the literature on social human rights examines specific social rights in particular contexts, this dissertation broadens the scope to identify and analyze similar patterns across contexts, beginning with best-test cases. The aim of this study is to determine the central barriers that marginalized groups face in accessing social rights in democratic societies. It asks, “Why is it that even in the most favorable conditions, marginalized ethnic groups continue to face difficulties accessing social rights?” In order to answer these questions, this dissertation includes two controlled comparisons of marginalized ethnic groups that have historically been excluded, but that are in the process of acquiring expanded citizenship rights: indigenous populations in Latin America and ethnic Romani groups in Europe. Despite centuries of exclusion and discrimination, these two groups are now in a process of new rights acquisition. Indigenous rights and representation are flourishing in Latin American democracies, and many ethnic Romani groups are now citizens of the European Union. To answer the central question, I analyze how citizenship regimes and state capacity influence indigenous groups’ access to housing, and health care rights in Bolivia and Peru, and the same for Romani migrants in France and Spain. Using qualitative methods such as process tracing, content analysis, and in-depth interviews collected through multi-sited field work, the main finding of this dissertation is that in democratic societies, two key variables affect the ability of marginalized ethnic groups to access social rights: the nature of the state's citizenship regime and its state capacity. For marginalized ethnic groups to have the best chance at accessing social rights, they must live in a state whose citizenship regime provides institutional opportunities to accommodate ethnic diversity, and that has both financial and administrative capacity. For marginalized groups to successfully access social rights, favorable citizenship is not enough. Social and political inclusion only helps to ensure that individuals have a say in their governments, but if their governments cannot effectively govern or provide material resources, their input may not have much of an effect. However, when states do have the capacity to provide material resources, and effectively govern and distribute those resources, citizenship regimes can make a considerable difference in improving access to social rights for marginalized groups. Additionally, from the perspective of social goods provisions, there can be a trade off between social and cultural belonging, and material wellbeing. Having one without having the other will perpetrate marginality and undermine the protection and fulfillment of human rights. This trade off has implications for human rights fulfillment in conjunction with development policy design; development policy must avoid a myopic focus on welfare outcomes that does not integrate mechanisms for access to justice and social inclusion. Unfortunately, the enjoyment of social rights specifically continues to rely on state-based institutions. However, improvements in states’ citizenship regimes and capacity can go a long way in providing more opportunities for marginalized ethnic groups to access those human rights institutions designed to protect their human rights and improve their welfare.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Political science
• ISBN: 9780438630383, 0438630386