Human rights law does not speak for itself – it is made through legal struggle. This talk introduces the concept of doctrinal entrepreneurship to illuminate how competing actors co-shape the interpretation and application of human rights norms in litigation over migrants' rights. While civil society actors mobilize human rights arguments to expand protections, governments act as doctrinal entrepreneurs in their own right, strategically recasting migration policy interests within the language of human rights to preserve sovereign discretion. Drawing on the jurisprudence of European human rights courts, the talk argues that human rights law's inherent indeterminacy enables both protective and restrictive outcomes, and that legalization and politicization of migrants’ rights are not opposites, but inseparably entangled.
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