Abstract This article investigates engagements of local authorities with human rights in the field of irregular migration in a small town, medium-sized city and a rural municipality in the Netherlands. Although scholarship on human rights cities constitutes an important point of departure for this study, this article challenges the urban bias in this emerging body of research on the role of local authorities in processes of human rights localization. Drawing from theories of legal pluralism, scholarship on human rights practice and encounters and finally geographical insights, the article examines spatial dimensions of human rights practices of municipal actors in these three municipalities. More specifically, it investigates how in these municipalities the presence of and encounters with irregular migrants in local institutional spaces contribute to a local contestation of human rights responsibilities and examines how this process of contesting human rights responsibilities differs between these municipalities. The article draws on and develops scholarship on human rights encounters, by extending the scope beyond encounters at high seas and by explicating how power dynamics, temporalities and the sites of encounters can give rise to perceptions of duties that set these encounters apart from everyday sociabilities or encounters with difference. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of municipal council documents and proceedings this study moreover found considerable differences with regard to how human rights responsibilities are contested locally by municipal actors. This study observed both differences among municipalities and differences among municipal actors within a single municipality in relation to these local understandings of human rights and perceptions of human rights responsibilities.

中文翻译：

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小地方的人权遭遇：荷兰三个城市的人权责任之争

摘要 本文调查了荷兰一个小镇、中型城市和农村自治市的地方当局在非正常移民领域的人权参与。尽管关于人权城市的学术研究构成了本研究的一个重要出发点，但本文挑战了这一新兴研究机构中关于地方当局在人权本地化过程中的作用的城市偏见。本文借鉴了法律多元化理论、人权实践和遭遇的学术研究以及最后的地理洞察力，考察了这三个城市中市政行为体的人权实践的空间维度。进一步来说，它调查了在这些城市中，当地机构空间中非正常移民的存在和遭遇如何促成了当地对人权责任的争论，并研究了这些城市之间在争论人权责任的过程中有何不同。这篇文章借鉴并发展了人权遭遇的学术研究，将范围扩展到公海遭遇之外，并解释了权力动态、时间和遭遇地点如何引起对责任的看法，使这些遭遇与日常社交或遇到不同。此外，在对市议会文件和议事程序进行定性内容分析的基础上，本研究还发现，市政行为者在当地如何抗辩人权责任方面存在很大差异。本研究观察了与这些地方对人权的理解和对人权责任的看法有关的城市之间的差异和单个城市内市政行为者之间的差异。