This paper will present the theory of the Right to Landscape as a framework for analysis of current societal challenges of migration and integration understood via the concept of landscape lens.
The nexus of landscape and human rights was developed based on a new definition of landscape. The customary understanding of the word landscape has traditionally been ‘scenery’ and a natural environment. In the last few decades, scholarship in diverse humanistic sciences from geography, archaeology, sociology to anthropology and several others has advanced a different definition: landscape is the relationship between humans and their environment. At the same time landscape is also the infrastructure for life, supporting physical survival as well as social, psychological and cultural needs. The terms used in migration discourses include words such as re-location and dis/placement implying that the physical environment – Landscape - is central to the migration experience. Thus this paper argues that landscape and migration are intertwined narratives and to understand migrants one has to address the notion of landscape as well.. Migration is about movement of people from one place or country to another. Migrants and nomadic communities have historically been discriminated by the State, and looked down at by locals. Those who do not have “roots” are considered inferior and ‘out of place’ both physically and metaphorically. Yet, whether nomadic, migrant or Citizen, landscape is fundamental to all humans. This understanding of landscape is encapsulated in the European Landscape Convention (ELC) signed in Florence in 2000, and ratified by 38 states. Landscape is a cultural construct, in ordinary as well as in outstanding and even degraded areas, and an entity that is “perceived by people”. Hence, landscape embodies both a spatial material dimension made of tangible elements, and non-material meanings and values arising from people’s perceptions. Understood as a tangible manifestation of societal structures, landscape is a reference in the processes of building individual and collective identities and a significant expression of local culture. A relationship with landscape is an expression of the human condition, a concept employed across disciplines. Landscape is thus the physical and emotional infrastructure for humans, a common good and a prerequisite for ensuring people’s wellbeing and quality of life. As such, ethical humanistic values for social justice and equality become relevant for landscape discourses supporting the concept of a human right to landscape.
