In defence of the migrant workers convention : standard-setting for contemporary migration

Abstract

The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and \nMembers of Their Families (‘the Migrant Workers Convention’) has had a difficult history. The \nadoption of a treaty on the subject of migrant workers was formally proposed by a General \nAssembly resolution of 17 December 1979.2 As a result of differences of opinion between states \nof origin and destination, however, the final text was not endorsed by the General Assembly \nuntil 18 December 1990.3 There was then a further lengthy period until the Convention came \ninto force on 1 July 2003, once the requisite 20 ratifications had been obtained. Since then, \nratification has proceeded slowly, with a total of 44 states having ratified by early 2011. \nIn contrast to the doubts that have often been expressed as to the value of the Migrant \nWorkers Convention, this chapter will argue for its potential as a source of standards \nconcerning international migration. Section 1 will consider the text of the Convention, and \nwill show that it is a coherent instrument for the protection of migrants as a category. Section 2 \nwill then consider the Convention in practice, arguing that its strength lies in a combination of \ntwo factors: the migration experiences of the states that have ratified it, and the interpretative \nwork of the Committee on Migrant Workers since it was established on 1 January 2004. That \ncombination enables the Convention to be an effective and authoritative source of standards \non the treatment of migrants. [Chapter Introduction]

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 22 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.