Abstract

This paper critically argues that the bio-politics of human rights have been utilized by Asian sovereign States to reconcile their traditional developmentalist or socialist mindset and globalizing neoliberal policies. Although Asia has developed the frameworks for human rights protection, they persistently reflect the Countries' sovereignty-oriented developmentalism or socialism, which were synthesized in terms of contemporary neoliberal governmental techniques. Through human rights as neoliberal governmentality, individuals are governable not only as "homo oeconomicus" but also as "homo juridicus" by means of neo-liberal techniques that regulate the variables of environment surrounding them. In the Asian context, socio-economic rights may function as neoliberal techniques to increase the capacity of individuals as human capital, while the neoliberal logic extends to anti-trafficking discourse to exclude unmarketable individuals