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This study combines anthropological and critical legal approaches to explore the conceptions of knowledge, expertise and learning of a network of Nordic human rights experts. It explores how the ideals of emancipation are realized in human rights action.

How can anthropologists negotiate access in high-profile, bureaucratic apparatuses, such as a UN human rights monitoring mechanism – and what can a detailed account of these negotiations tell us of such apparatuses, their operational dynamics and the processes through which they exert an impact, broadly construed? This article addresses these questions through the notion of tactical subjectivity by anchoring its discussion on the category of the intern and detailing how this category became informative of the 'fuzzy logic' of the UN apparatus. The article outlines three techniques mobilised in the process – name-dropping, 'playing blonde' and opportunism – all embedded in a tactical matrix of exaggerated transparency. The article further shares attempts to flesh out relations and thus form 'liaisons' between my interlocutors and myself at sessions of the UN Human Rights Committee, the most influential of all the UN treaty bodies overseeing how states comply with their covenant-bound obligations. The ultimate aim was to become a conspicuous ethnographer with constant access – a volatile goal in the unpredictable microstructures of this awesome global apparatus. ; In the 1940s activists lobbied for the creation of a binding international bill of rights backed up by an interna- tional human rights court as the backbone of the postWorld War II order. Together, so the activists believed, these would guarantee peace and harmony to all mankind. Seven decades later this vision has been transformed into a cluster of UN human rights treaties and expert committees known as treaty bodies to monitor them. In practice treaty bodies process documents in ongoing bureaucratic cycles, which are located somewhere between an audit ritual and a court session. This duality is a source of strength as well as vulnerability and frustration, embodying an endless navigation between the 'utopia' of a robust and binding legal framework and an 'apology' for actual state conduct. This paper explores how this duality manifests itself in the practices of the most authoritative and 'courtlike' treaty body of the UN, namely the Human Rights Committee monitoring state compliance over the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), simulta- neously exploring how the vision is kept alive. ; Peer reviewed

For people on the move, family reunification has become a major 'channel' to Europe, and the 'right to family' is a widely recognized principle in international human rights protection and domestic legislations. Yet in practice exercising this 'right' is often difficult and migration buraucracies leave applicants unsure not only of the outcome of their applications but of the criteria that are relied on in the decisions. In this article we analyze this dynamic via the case study of Finland and a close analysis of 253 appeals on family reunification applications at the Administrative Court of Helsinki between 2003 and 2014. Our sample includes all decisions that mention 'DNA,' which has become a routinely utilized biotechnological tool in family reunification applications internationally. Our analysis focuses particularly on the 51 cases in which DNA testing has confirmed the existence of biological family ties but the applications have, nevertheless, been rejected. This article is contextualized in scholarship analyzing the recent spread of biotechnological tools and biometrics in immigration management. Simultaneously we discuss the quest for 'information,' 'certainty' and 'truth' that characterize family reunification applications. Relying on the recently flourished ethnography of documents, this article is ultimately about the indeterminacy and intrinsic superficiality of 'the law.' ; Peer reviewed