Migration and Human Rights

International Migration Review, 2010

Human Rights Review, 2012

International Journal of Law in Context, 2010

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2012

Migrant rights were put squarely on the agenda of the Global Forum on Migration and Development when it met in Manila in 2008, as the principal theme of the governmental and civil society discussions. The Forum proceeded with the assumption that migrant rights are a development issue, as well as a fundamental human rights issue. This article begins with a review of the normative framework for protecting migrant rights. While norms by themselves will not prevent abuses, they can serve as a basis for advocating implementation of policies and programs to achieve these goals. We argue that there is ample international law setting out the basic rights of migrants even though the principal migrant-centric instruments are not widely ratified. Failures in protecting migrant rights arise from the lack of implementation of these standards at the national level. The article then discusses a range of programs, mostly implemented by or in destination countries, which hold potential for overcoming barriers to the protection of the rights of migrants. These practical steps can be found in a wide array of countries, most of which have not become party to the Migrant Workers Convention. The article concludes that these initiatives have been implemented in an ad hoc manner, necessitating a more systematic approach at the national level to the protection of migrant rights.

The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMW) was adopted in 1990 by the United Nations, but has been ratified by 51 States only, and by no major Western migration-receiving State. This article outlines two interpretations of this low ratification record. On the one hand, it can be understood as puzzling because Western liberal democracies support human rights and because the ICMW does not call for new rights that would not already exist in domestic law or in other international human rights instruments. On the other hand, it can be understood as logical because, from a cost-benefit perspective, the rights of migrants are difficult to reconcile with market logics in destination countries and because there are structural economic forces that make it difficult to reach multilateral agreements on migrant workers' rights. This article further argues that these legal and socioeconomic arguments do not exhaust the issue and that the current situation of the ICMW is to a large extent the product of political factors, particularly of the lack of political support for migrants' rights at the international and national levels.

Human Rights Review, 2012

Global Society, 2009

Geneva: Global Commission on International Migration, 2005