Non-citizen children and the right to stay – a discourse ethical approach

ABSTRACT The increased efforts of democratic states to enforce immigration control and deportations have sparked heated public debates about the rights of non-citizen children to be granted asylum. Local communities, anti-deportation movements, and children themselves have rejected the justifications provided by state authorities and have mobilized claims in the public sphere for the rights of non-citizen children to stay. To date, scholars have primarily analysed normative issues about the rights of non-citizen children with departure in legal positive rights as enshrined in domestic and international law; however, scholars have paid less attention to political theoretical aspects of the issue. This article takes its point of departure from claims for non-citizen children’s right to stay as formulated in the public sphere and uses discourse ethics to theorize in what ways these claims challenge state power and contemporary laws on asylum. In addition, this article contributes to the scholarly debates about the pressing global political issue of child migration and the political theory of human rights for children. Building on Seyla Benhabib’s concepts reciprocity and democratic iterations, this article develops a discourse theoretical approach that offers an alternative framework to a legalistic approach for the normative analysis of the rights of non-citizen children.