서강대학교

초록/요약 도움말

French government has performed extraordinarily in complying to the international human rights regime while many other states have failed to do so. Particularly regarding the children’s right to education, the national practice has exceeded the norms of the international human rights regime, offering free primary and secondary education and additional education support to undocumented migrant minors in France, which is, however, at odd with strict national immigration policy. In the context of international politics, the educational treatment to the undocumented migrant children by French government could be explained with two broad schools of theories about states’ compliance to international regime, namely, normative models and rational actor models. With consideration of domestic setting in France, interest-based rational actor model hypothesis seems to provide a plausible and convincing explanation to the question. The question this study aims to answer is: what has made France to develop fully education-right-guaranteeing policies on undocumented migrant children and thus made compliance to the international human rights regime possible on contrary to the adoption of national immigration policies that tightens the rights of entry and other states’ less commitment behavior with international human rights regime. In order to answer the question, a hypothesis is built on rational actor models: domestic interests defined as social demands for integration of the undocumented migrant children have led to the establishment of policies and practices for ensuring education right of undocumented migrant children in France. To test the hypothesis, strengths and flaws of two theories are examined at first. When it is comprehended that rational actor theory holds more explanatory power to the issue, elements of the theory becomes the barometer to furthermore find out the ‘interest’ and rationale of French government in commitment to the education right of undocumented migrant children. Since the study is limited to focus on domestic setting, it is not this study’s intention to downplay other factors not covered in this study. This study uses the methodology of chronological review and document analysis. With these methods implemented, the hypothesis is confirmed that French government’s ‘interest’ on undocumented migrant children has influenced France to pursue the human right based education policies on them. Keywords: undocumented migrant children, education right, France, integration, international human rights regime, compliance