A quest for opening up borders Do human rights enhance a form of international membership?

Abstract: This thesis touches upon and considers the relation between a person, state, and access to rights, with international freedom of movement as a vanguard. As movement is inherent in humans and allows us to search for other standards of living it is somehow central in this thesis. In relation to access to rights moving, across borders touches upon several issues, for example what is required of a person in order for that person to be able to access rights accross borders? These requirements and the implementation of those requirements more or less differ per state. These requirements enable exclusion of persons from having access to rights within and across borders, and this makes freedom of movement far from self-evident. Furthermore, these requirements strongly relate to a person-state relation. This relation, which can have different faces, is in turn strongly connected to state sovereignty. To explore the relation between a person, state and access to rights, different concepts are elaborated upon, such as: nation, nationality, state, state sovereignty, citizenship, and statelessness. Following this conceptual overview, international freedom of movement will get attention, including (unavoidably): migration, borders, requirements similar to the effect of borders, and detention. The main challenge, with international freedom of movement as a vanguard, is to look for complementary ideas and-or alternatives both to enable and to improve access to rights. (Re)considering the present connection between a person, state and access to rights, as it more or less currently stands, some alternatives will be discussed, and will allow us to think about different possibilities. Emphasing that although from a human rights law perspective certain alternatives or directions of thinking might be more preferable, there is no fixed or single solution for improvement (re)considering the relation. Therefore, new or- complementary ideas and contributions will hopefully emerge.