Birth Registration and Protection for Children of Transnational Labor Migrants in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Policies on transnational labor migration do not consider workers' needs as parents or the rights and welfare of their children, including a child's right to an official identity through birth registration. A study of birth-registration decision making by migrant parents in Lombok, Indonesia underscored the need for targeted responses to uniquely challenging circumstances and priorities of migrant parents. Free birth registration through birthing and health centers and village-level leaders can overcome problems of decentralized implementation of national strategies and an exploitive registration brokerage industry, mitigating risks of de facto statelessness for children and a multigenerational pattern of undocumented and unsafe migration.     

Autonomy, justice, and disability

In this Article, Professor Carlos A. Ball explores the philosophical foundations for the types of rights and benefits that our society currently provides to individuals with disabilities. The concept of autonomy places on society a moral obligation to assist individuals with disabilities when their basic human functional capabilities are impaired. The exercise of this obligation entails assisting individuals with crossing a minimum threshold of functional capabilities below which it is not possible to lead autonomous lives. In making this argument, Professor Ball responds to libertarian critics who contend that notions of freedom or liberty proscribe an activist role for government in this arena. He explains how even a libertarian state redistributes wealth in order to provide for some incapacities. Professor Ball also disputes the idea that the meeting of the needs of the disabled is enough to provide moral justification for the rights and benefits provided to individuals with disabilities. The problem with the concept of needs, Professor Ball argues, is that it fails to account sufficiently for the human good of personal autonomy.     

Professor Skinner's Visions

Skinner, Q. (2002) Visions of Politics , Volume I: Regarding Method . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, Q. (2002) Visions of Politics , Volume II: Renaissance Virtues . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, Q. (2002) Visions of Politics , Volume III: Hobbes and Civil Science . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.