The UN Convention on Migrant Workers’ Rights and International Migration Management

This paper examines the relationship between the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and contemporary discourses on international migration management. It shows that, while both converge on a number of points such as multilateral cooperation in policy making or the need for a comprehensive approach to migration, the Convention is largely ignored by most of the initiatives taking place under the “migration management” umbrella, and that it therefore remains an under-ratified treaty. To understand this situation, the paper analyses the obstacles encountered by the Convention and shows that further acceptance of the Convention is hampered by profound political obstacles. It therefore argues that, if migration management has introduced shifts in states’ approach to migration, it has so far been unable to put migrants’ rights at the core of this process, and that this may ultimately jeopardise its success.