Property, Power and Human Rights

Laura Dehaibi, Professor of Labour & Employment Law, Department of Industrial Relations, Laval University, Canada

‘In Property, Power and Human Rights, Laura Dehaibi disentangles the all-too-dominant Western liberal conception of property from a human right to property. In conceiving of property as a human right, Dehaibi provides a critical methodology formulated through insights from Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), critical legal theory, law & society, and a range of legal cases involving claimants in the Global South or marginalized populations in Europe. She offers a powerful argument for the necessity of a nuanced, contextualized approach to property, inclusive of social relations, political and power dimensions, and lived experiences with land, particularly for those on the edges of ownership. In other words, she gives her readers not just an alternative substantive understanding of property relations but rather an alternative method to conceive of property, one which dethrones the individualistic, capitalist and market-oriented one often found in jurisprudence and commentary in favor of a critical, grounded, and dialogical approach.’

• Contents:1 Introduction to Property, Power and Human Rights 2 Lived truths: A critical engagement with universalism 3 ‘The guardian of every other rights’: Challenging theliberal discourse of property in human rights law4 Drafting a human right to property: Conflated notions,deflated hopes5 What place for stories of property? Property in regionalhuman rights case law6 When stories matter: Challenging liberal orthodoxiesthrough the margins7 Property, access, and social participation8 Empowerment before entitlement: Revisiting lived universalismBibliography