IES Research Projects

Irregular migrants in the European Union – do they enjoy the rights contained in the UN Migrant Workers Convention?

The EU estimates today about 8 million irregular migrant workers in its territory. Human rights of many of them are being violated in the “area of freedom and democracy”, in the European Union. Irregular labour migrants often face dangerous working conditions, long hours, low pay but also other fundamental human rights violations. The European culture and democracy is based on respect for basic human rights and those should be respected within the EU anytime and towards anyone.

The set of fundamental human rights for all migrants, including those in irregular situation, are entailed in the 1990 UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW). Nobody has ever denied the right for all human beings for these rights, however, any EU Member state has so far signed or ratified the CMW. One of the most often employed arguments by the EU Member states why not to accede to the CMW has been the claim of redundancy and unnecessity of it.

Most of all because the rights contained in the CMW are already covered by other international and regional instruments that are legally binding in the EU. This claim is to be examined in this study. Every single right from the CMW granted to irregular migrants is to be compared to the current legal framework in the European Union, primarily to the rights based in the core UN international treaties and in the CoE Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

BIO:

Karolína Babická joined the Institute for European Studies in February 2011 as a visiting doctoral researcher. She is pursuing her PhD studies at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague. Her research project is focusing on the international legal framework of irregular migration in Europe. More specifically, it aims at comparing the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families with the rights those migrants have according to the current legal framework in the European Union.

Karolína Babická studied Law at the Charles University (CZ) and the University of Nottingham (UK). She received her Master in Law in 2008, graduating on a thesis concerning the international legal framework of human trafficking. Before starting her PhD studies, she gained some work experience as migration coordinator in Caritas Czech Republic, lawyer for the Association for Probation and Mediation in Justice and researcher for the Multicultural Center Prague within the PROSINT project led by the International Centre for Migration Policy and Development: Study on the National Policy Frame for the Integration of Newcomers.

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