Migration, Human Rights and Social Rights

Abstract

Social rights are human rights. Nowadays, the evidence is hardly contested. But how effective has it been migrant workers, considering it is estimated that 90% of migrants are workers or persons looking work? Relatively efficient, would answer those who have in mind the stereotypical migrant worker of the Keynesian economy. Such a worker would be male, documented and intending to stay on the host territory to work a relatively long period of time or to regularise their status as residents or citizens on the host territory. This figure of the migrant worker is more and more contested. Modern migrants evolve in a much more complex, insecure and global environment. In addition, the South-North movement of migrations is turning to be and by large a South-South one. Accordingly, migrant workers’ relation to space, time and condition must be described as highly variable as well as their legal status in the host-territory. Taking an evolutionary perspective, this paper is an invitation to assess how much a migrant worker can (at least in theory) enjoy his or her human rights by the simple fact of being in a national and sovereign territory. There has been progress. After having set the stage (section 1) the paper surveys the evolution of the International Labor Organization's (ILO) normative and soft standards in regard to migrant work (section 2). Concluding with the limitations of such evolution, it then looks at the issue of factoring the social rights of migrant workers in the more general framework of international human rights (section 3) followed by an analysis of the exercise of looking migrant rights for all in the European Social Charter (Revised) (section 4). No doubt that the modern international law of migrant persons makes serious attempts to consider above a migrant as a person who should be able to enjoy his or her human rights. Both the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrants Workers (section 5) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (section 6) go in this direction.