This book describes the potential and challenges of cosmopolitanism from a philosophical and historical point of view. Through the prism of cosmopolitanism, this book considers how the recent surge in migration is affecting our current reality, while also taking stock of the contemporary potential of cosmopolitan ideas. It considers and compares the significance of religion and culture for the wider societal acceptance or rejection of refugees. Moreover, the book examines the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence on immigration policies, non-refoulement, humanitarian law and gender. It presents empirically based research of a quantitative, qualitative and comparative nature regarding the determinants of attitudes towards cosmopolitanism and more generally concerning public opinion on migration issues, and reflects on conceptions of and attitudes towards citizenship, while also imagining new forms of citizenship. This book serves as a comprehensive overview and resource for migration scholars from the social sciences and the humanities, as well as students and other stakeholders in the fields of migration and human rights.

This book describes the potential and challenges of cosmopolitanism from a philosophical and historical point of view. Through the prism of cosmopolitanism, this book considers how the recent surge in migration is affecting our current reality, while also taking stock of the contemporary potential of cosmopolitan ideas. It considers and compares the significance of religion and culture for the wider societal acceptance or rejection of refugees. Moreover, the book examines the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence on immigration policies, non-refoulement, humanitarian law and gender. It presents empirically based research of a quantitative, qualitative and comparative nature regarding the determinants of attitudes towards cosmopolitanism and more generally concerning public opinion on migration issues, and reflects on conceptions of and attitudes towards citizenship, while also imagining new forms of citizenship. This book serves as a comprehensive overview and resource for migration scholars from the social sciences and the humanities, as well as students and other stakeholders in the fields of migration and human rights.

This study argues that we cannot reasonably keep on speaking as though there is only one conception of human rights. The consensus around certain core rights, though important, hides the fact that very different moral sensibilities are at work. The American and French declarations from the 18th century originate in a very different moral sensibility than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948. Their conceptions of humanity and its moral destiny are totally different. The former emphasise liberty while the latter emphasise human flourishing. The former enforces basic rules of mutual respect and leaves the rest to the individual's own choice, while the latter conceives human life as basically moral prescribing an ideal of human perfection. A third and very common conception today conceives human rights as a basic standard of human decency, which does not exclude other moral considerations. A basic regime of human rights leaves room for local choices in favour of liberty, human flourishing or something else, but no particular declaration seems to correspond to the view. This third view seems to be of a recent date and its theoretical foundation is such that it cannot claim any of the other declarations as its ancestors though it might be a "mutation" or misunderstanding of the classical 18th century declarations. A major part of this study traces the origin of the conception of rights behind the classical declarations, notably the Virginia declaration of 1776 and the French declaration of 1789. This conception will be contrasted with a perfectionist conception of morality, which only furnished itself with a conception of human rights very late. The third conception will be examined in the last chapter.

Text in French. On distingue dans la philosophie politique moderne une preoccupation particuliere, a savoir le conflit entre individu et etat. Quelle philosophie morale pourrait trancher entre ces deux concepts ? Qu'on donne a chacun le droit a la contestation, et l'on voit se dresser immediatement le spectre de l'anarchie. Si nous refusons ce droit, la souverainete de l'etat peut sans conteste tourner au despotisme. Avec sa theorie de la souverainete, Jean Bodin joue un role cle dans l'histoire de ce dilemme. Le rapport entre sa theorie du droit naturel et celle de la souverainete est au centre des recherches presentees dans cette etude portant en particulier sur son ouvrage La Republique de 1576.