Conceptualising globalisation and human rights: boomerangs and borders

This article attempts to address a basic question in relation to human rights: are there conceptual frameworks that can be applied usefully to the entire terrain of globalisation, cutting across its layered processes and the activities of both supporters and critics? Two, inter-related, frameworks are discussed here: boomerangs and borders. Three boomerangs are identified: the advocacy boomerang, the boomerang as campaigning strategy, and the (in)security boomerang. The boomerang is one pattern of global linkage that can originate in either the North or South, with the powerful or powerless, that both potentially undermines human rights and suggests possible forms of activism, prevention and redress. While boomerangs indicate that globalisation is characterised by interconnectedness, borders outline patterns and processes of difference, inequality and division. First, a concern with borders must address the considerable residual importance of the state. But border regimes are being redrawn by globalisation, as borders increasingly transcend state structures and control, highlighting new human rights actors and concerns. The article highlights violent borders, violently policed, dividing the world into those who have and those who have not and 'relations of disjuncture' within globalisation itself. Underpinning the discussion is a final question: are human rights part of a neo-liberal globalisation agenda or attempts to challenge its current supremacy? It is still an open question, and one crucial to the future of both human rights and globalisation, for which side human rights will ultimately be secured.