Enhancing “safe, orderly and regular migration”: Human rights protection for migrant workers at the intersection of multiple normative frameworks

Course description:

The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, adopted in September 2016 by the United Nations, marked a timely recognition of the need to increase cooperation on international migration. This declaration, by promoting the adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in 2018, represents a turning point in defining a cooperative framework able to reinforce the implementation of existing rights. 

This lecture will focus on the major objectives and related actionable commitments that can have an impact on labour mobility. In this context, the lecture aims to pay particular attention to key challenges and pressing issues in the correct application of human rights obligations to  migrant workers and the potential role of the new framework in filling gaps related to their protection.  To complete this introduction and to bring the international debate “down to earth”, the lecture will introduce some insights from two case studies: one on the current evolution of labour mobility in the Pacific and the other in the ASEAN, which offer concrete examples of the salient features of contemporary multilevel regimes and the migration–trade nexus.

The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, adopted in September 2016 by the United Nations, marked a timely recognition of the need to increase cooperation on international migration. This declaration, by promoting the adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in 2018, represents a turning point in defining a cooperative framework able to reinforce the implementation of existing rights. 

This lecture will focus on the major objectives and related actionable commitments that can have an impact on labour mobility. In this context, the lecture aims to pay particular attention to key challenges and pressing issues in the correct application of human rights obligations to  migrant workers and the potential role of the new framework in filling gaps related to their protection.  To complete this introduction and to bring the international debate “down to earth”, the lecture will introduce some insights from two case studies: one on the current evolution of labour mobility in the Pacific and the other in the ASEAN, which offer concrete examples of the salient features of contemporary multilevel regimes and the migration–trade nexus.

Reading list:

• The UN’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: 
Analysis of the Final Draft, 13 July 2018, Objective by Objective, Edited by Elspeth Guild (Queen Mary University of London) and Tugba Basaran (University of Cambridge), 2018, available at: https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/themed-content/global-compact-for-migration/.
• Flavia Jurje and Sandra Lavenex, Mobility Norms in Free Trade Agreements – Migration Governance in Asia between Regional Integration and Free Trade, European Journal of East Asian Studies, 2018, vol. 17.
• Yvonne Underhill-Sem and Evelyn Marsters, Labour Mobility in the Pacific: A systematic literature review of development impacts, New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research, 2017.

• The UN’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: 
Analysis of the Final Draft, 13 July 2018, Objective by Objective, Edited by Elspeth Guild (Queen Mary University of London) and Tugba Basaran (University of Cambridge), 2018, available at: https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/themed-content/global-compact-for-migration/.
• Flavia Jurje and Sandra Lavenex, Mobility Norms in Free Trade Agreements – Migration Governance in Asia between Regional Integration and Free Trade, European Journal of East Asian Studies, 2018, vol. 17.
• Yvonne Underhill-Sem and Evelyn Marsters, Labour Mobility in the Pacific: A systematic literature review of development impacts, New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research, 2017.