By Diana Camps, University of Glasgow
To build spaces that honour language rights also means focussing on how language intersects with a range of other rights, and how an inability to access certain spaces results in inequalities and social injustice. My colleagues and I grappled with these issues in recent research examining access to social rights across the UK. We share our insights in a new book, Access to Social Justice: Effective Remedies for Social Rights (2025), published by Bristol University Press and accessible via Open Access. Our book goes beyond examining legal rights to looking at how these rights are understood and taken up in policy and practice.
In the UK, we know that the law fails to protect people’s social rights, especially those who are most disadvantaged. In our research, we focused on the rights to housing, food, fuel and social security. Social rights, like all human rights, are interdependent, and indivisible and thus intersect with a range of other rights, including linguistic rights. This means that the violation of one right can impact the protection and enjoyment of another, creating a snowball effect and resulting in what Luke Clements terms ‘clustered injustice’.
We well know that language, or discourse, plays a key role in creating social difference and constructing inequality. The influential work of Dell Hymes reminds us that language forms may be equal in substance, but there may be significant differences in how language actually works in society. This linguistic inequality and, consequently, much social inequality is the result of differences in the use of language and how/ which discourses are used to achieve certain aims. In our work, we found that not all members of society have access to language or discourse in the same way, resulting in a significant impact on the realisation of social rights and the ability to access an effective remedy (a legal solution). Broader societal discourses around immigration, austerity, Brexit and COVID-19 also often contribute to (re)producing stigma, prejudice and exclusion.
In our book, we argue for two important changes. Firstly, social rights need to be legally protected in and of themselves to adequately address rights violations and, secondly, we need to pay attention to language and how it plays a vital role in creating injustice. The current legal system is not fit for purpose, which has a disproportionately negative impact on certain groups of people, including women, children, lone parents, minority ethnic groups, persons seeking asylum and persons with disabilities.
One element that is echoed across the data is a silencing of voices, which points to the inequality embedded in a system that structurally, and often intentionally, undermines the voices of its people, particularly those who are made most vulnerable.
Public services need to recognise that siloed approaches to rights violations are vastly inadequate and that the justice system must adapt to recognise and respond to clustered injustice. We also urgently need to change the conversation around social rights, and language plays a key role in reclaiming the narrative for social rights by recognising and addressing the tools and mechanisms that block access to justice.
Language is a powerful catalyst for challenging injustice, not only by making visible areas that warrant change or improvement but by challenging the very assumptions on which dominant frames are based. At the UK national level, these frames still include outdated ideas that assume social rights cannot be legally enforced and few voices determine who is ‘deserving’ of social rights and dignity.
Reclaiming this narrative, along with embedding social rights as legal rights in the UK, will create new spaces and pathways that provide not only ‘access’ but meaningful ways of participating in frameworks that can lead to social justice and effective remedies for social rights.
Access to Social Justice: Effective Remedies for Social Rights (2025), Bristol University Press
Katie Boyle, Diana Camps, Kirstie Ken English, Jo Edson Ferrie, Aidan Flegg and Gaurav Mukherjee
Dr. Diana Camps is a researcher, lecturer, and Co-Chair of the Global Coalition for Language Rights. Her work explores the role of language and discourse in shaping injustice and inequality, with a focus on migration, education, cultural rights, and access to justice. Drawing from her research at the University of Glasgow and her leadership in global advocacy, she examines how language intersects with social rights and human rights, advocating for a holistic approach to social justice.
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