Making Claims for Migrant Workers: Human Rights and Citizenship

Migrant workers claims for greater protection in a globalized world are typically expressed either in the idiom of international human rights or citizenship. Instead of contrasting these two normative frames, the paper explores the extent to which human rights and citizenship discourses intersect when it comes to claims by migrant workers. An analysis of the international human and labour rights instruments that are specifically designed for migrant workers reveals how neither discourse questions the assumption of territorial state sovereignty. Drawing upon sociological and political approaches to human rights claims, I evaluate the Arendtian-inspired critique of international human rights, which is that they ignore the very basis ‘right to have rights’. In doing so, I discuss the different dimensions of citizenship and conclude that international rights can be used by migrant workers to assert right claims that reinforce a conception of citizenship that, although different from national citizenship, has the potential to address their distinctive social location

Migration and Sustainable Development in the EU : A Case Study of the Seasonal Workers Directive

Most discussions of the EU’s development agenda that emphasize the social dimension of globalisation in general or labour rights and standard in particular tend to focus on either trade agreements or aid. However, in 1999, the EU explicitly linked migration to its development objectives, and in 2011, the European Commission launched the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM), which lists ‘maximizing the development impact of migration and mobility’ as one of its four pillars. A distinctive feature of the GAMM’s approach is that migrants are placed at the centre and their human rights are to be mainstreamed throughout the migration cycle. To what extent is the GAMM’s commitment to migrants rights being put into practice? How does the GAMM’s emphasis on migrant’s rights impact upon development? Using the recently adopted Seasonal Workers Directive as my focus, I will attempt to address these questions. First, I will examine the extent to which the Directive protects migrant workers’ human rights and ensures that they have access to meaningful labour standards. Second, I will explore the extent to which the Directive facilitates circular migration, which is seen as a key component of development-oriented migration. Third, I will consider the relationship between this Directive and Mobility Partnerships, which are the EU’s key instruments for linking migration to development, when it comes to migrant workers rights and circular migration

Labour Protection for Self-Employed Workers

Self-employed workers have an legal ambiguous status. Traditionally self-employment is equated with entrepreneurship and legally it is considered to be a form of independent contracting and thus outside the ambit of labour protection and collective bargaining laws. But the evidence suggests that most of the self-employed, especially those who do not employ other workers, are much more like employees than they are like entrepreneurs. Instead of attempting to draw a new line between employment and independent contracting for the purpose of determining the scope of labour protection, collective bargaining, and social insurance laws, all workers, including the self-employed, who depend on the sale of their capacity to work should be covered by these laws, unless there are compelling public policy reasons for a narrower definition