Dr Angeleri’s chapter, “Pursuing Health Rights for Distressed Migrants: Harnessing Interdisciplinary Inputs and Legal Literacy,” examines the specific challenges involved in securing health rights for migrant populations and, in doing so, highlights both the potential and the limitations of human rights law as a tool for advancing equity and social justice for marginalised non-nationals fleeing situations of distress. Angeleri observes that many human rights bodies have struggled to reverse the persistent tendency to treat migrants as problematic or peripheral rights-holders who do not fit the liberal model of the rights-bearing subject within a nation-state framework primarily designed to protect the interests of citizens.
He therefore calls for greater clarification of health-related rights and corresponding state obligations toward migrants and refugees, alongside increased attention to health and legal literacy and to the role of human rights intermediaries—such as community leaders and development actors—in mobilising human rights principles and standards in practice. The chapter also discusses the efforts of the European Committee of Social Rights to extend Charter protections to all distress migrants, while noting the complexities created by differentiated statuses and entrenched forms of social stratification.