Fernández Bessa Cristina

This author's articles

• A right-based approach to migration policies in a context of emergencies: ’Expelling States’ and semi-persons in the European Union

  28 April 2009
  The European socio-political climate and its repercussions on person’s rights and liberties trigger multiple challenges. The widening process of the European Union (EU), the hardening of legislation on immigration and terrorism, and the new practices of police and security services make the basic principles and values on which consolidated European democracies lay tilt.

• Report on the situation on the Euro-Mediterranean borders

  27 April 2009
  Euro-Mediterranean borders are internationally known, especially in Europe, for the causalities and the violation of Human Rights of migrant people trying to reach the European shores of Andalusia, Sicilia, Lampedusa, the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla and later the shores of the Canary Islands. The management of migrations is a key topic of the contemporary national and European polices, mainly for the Euro-Mediterranean countries.

• The effects of exceptional legislation on criminalization of immigrants and people suspected of terrorism

  27 April 2009
  On the current global context of war against terrorism, the traditional liberties and guarantees of the Rule of Law, are not been respected for all people. This is the case of immigrants for example, as they are considered potential dangerous people. The measures to regulate immigration and the measures to fight against terrorism are dangerously being confused, causing terrible consequences for some people.

• Deprivation of Liberty and Human Rights in Spain

  27 April 2009
  The Spanish State figures at international reports as one of the countries where torture persist, resulting in recommendations to eradicate or, at least, to minimize this practice. As such, the international organizations responsible for the protection of human rights denounce the lack of political will on the part of the Spanish Authorities (statutory, regional and local) to eradicate torture.

• Punitive management of urban space

  6 octobre 2008
  The reaction of several municipal authorities to the fear of crime, anti-social behaviour and the resulting City-dwellers’ intolerance is to produce legal instruments to deal with « incivilities » and to promote peaceful coexistence in the city. In the case of Barcelona, this instrument is the so called « Good Citizen’s Charter of Barcelona », which came into effect on 15th January, 2006. After one year of enforcement we have evaluated the consequences of the implementation of this by-law.

• The War on Terror. The Spanish Case

  24 May 2006
  The terrorist attacks in Madrid M-11 did not demand the production of fresh exceptional laws, since a whole exceptionalist framework was already designed and well developed to face the activities of armed groups, and particularly those of the Basque independentist ETA. We approach to Spanish exceptionalism from the view of the legal perspecetive called Criminal Law of the Enemy (also called Criminal Law of Police) developed by German legal scholar, G. Jakobs. The antiterrorist policies implemented after Madrid bombings have fitted well that legal perspective and have meant a wider criminalization of Muslim migrants and in general the view society have of Islam.

• Spanish Immigration Policies and Legislative Evolution in that Field as a New Exceptional Framework

  24 May 2006
  While laws of immigration in Spain have intended officially to guarantee the rights and liberties of the immigrants and to provide their social integration, as their titles always assure, they have served, in practice, for just the opposite, for the legal and social construction of irregular immigrant to whom the recognition of rights is notably shrinked and who is forced to live in social marginalization, turned into a non-person.

• Fernández Bessa Cristina : curriculum vitae

  26 April 2005
  Cristina Fernández Bessa is graduated in Law (2003). She is candidate to the title of European Master in Penal Systems and Social Problems (2005) by the University of Barcelona as well as candidate to the Ph. D. in Law, special field on Sociology of Criminal Law. She is researcher of the Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Humans of the University of Barcelona. Her areas of interest include: the relation between Criminal law and Human Rights, social consequences of migration politics and laws and feminine migrations.