Migrant workers: social injustice and lack of human rights : an analysis on the case of migrant domestic workers and international human rights law

Abstract

The present paper examines the human rights violations faced by the migrant domestic workers and the protection guaranteed by the international human rights law. It analyzes the contemporary forms of abuses and exploitation in the context of the international labor migration and how the international law answers to them. A sociolegal methodology is applied. Secondary data from sociology and migration studies is used in order to analyze the forms of abuses, their causes and consequences. Through legal analysis, the international instruments are presented, systematized and examined. The study concludes that the international human rights law has been ineffective in addressing and improving the lives of domestic migrant workers. The main reason is the dependency of its success on the commitment of the states on the actual implementation of the rights. The states are willing to offer lower standards of protection among migrants rather than effective protection. On the other hand, the litigation of abuses against migrant domestic workers is particularly ineffective since the people who are experiencing the abuses are working and living in very vulnerable and hidden condition. It argues in the favor of policies and laws grounded in the social reality of the actual abuses as well as more reflexive to the multifaceted and changing contexts of the abuses. It calls for active policies that would contribute to the empowerment of migrant domestic workers, as the only way towards social justice.