The Economics and Politics of Migrant Rights

2008 – 2014

Overview Theory Methods Partners Findings Outputs Impact News & Media

Overview

This project analyses how and why high-income countries restrict the rights of migrant workers (‘migrant rights’) as part of their labour immigration policies, and discusses the implications for policy debates about regulating labour migration and protecting migrants. It engages with theoretical debates about the tensions between human rights and citizenship rights, the agency and interests of migrants and states, and the determinants and ethics of labour immigration policy. The empirical analysis of the project is global, and includes an examination of the characteristics and key features of labour immigration policies and restrictions of migrant rights in over forty high-income countries as well as in-depth analysis of policy drivers in major migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries.

The project aims to contribute to normative and policy debates about the rights that migrants workers should have when working abroad. In particular, the project explores whether there is a case for advocating a limited set of ‘core rights’ for migrant workers, rather than the comprehensive set of rights demanded by the UN’s International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, and, if so, what these core rights should be, and what implications might ensue for human rights-based approaches to international labour migration. As these research questions suggest, the project separates hard-nosed political economy analysis of the determinants of migrant rights in practice (i.e., what is current reality) from the equally important normative discussion of what rights migrant workers should have from a moral/ethical point of view.

Principal Investigator

Martin Ruhs

Funding

ESRC (COMPAS core funds)

A key analytical starting point of this project is that the rights of migrant workers not only have intrinsic value as underscored by human rights approaches, but also play an instrumental role in shaping the effects of international labour migration for receiving countries, migrants and their countries of origin. Because rights shape the effects of labour immigration, migrant rights are in practice a core component of nation-states’ labour immigration policies.

The design of labour immigration policy requires simultaneous policy decisions on how to regulate the number of migrants to be admitted (e.g., through quotas or points-based systems); how to select migrants (e.g., by skill and/or nationality); and what rights to grant migrants after admission (e.g., temporary or permanent residence; access to welfare benefits; and limited or unlimited rights to employment). When receiving countries decide on these three issues, the impacts on the ‘national interest’ (however defined) of the existing residents in the host countries are likely to be of great significance.

Viewing migrant rights as instruments of labour immigration policy has two key implications for research. First, any analysis of the reasons for migrant rights restrictions necessitates an explicit discussion of the economic, social, political, and other consequences of migrant rights (restrictions) for the national interests of migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries, as well as for migrants themselves. These consequences can include multifaceted benefits along with costs that may vary across different rights, between the short and long run, as well as between migrants with different skills. Any analysis of the costs and benefits of migrant rights thus needs to be disaggregated, and needs to look at the impacts of specific rights for specific groups of migrant workers.

Second, migrant rights cannot be studied in isolation of admissions policy, both in terms of positive and normative analysis. To understand why, when, and how countries restrict the rights of migrant workers, and explore what rights migrant workers should have, we need to consider how particular rights restrictions are related to policies that regulate the admission (i.e., the numbers and selection) of migrant workers. In other words, theories, empirical analysis and normative debates of labour immigration policy need to take account of openness, skills and rights.