Chapter 7 - Temporary Labor Migration

Summary

Chapter 7 focuses on justice for temporary labor migrants. Though the chapter surveys many normative issues concerning temporary labor migration, the focus is on new sources of concern, such as those introduced by private recruitment companies, which are often guilty of serious deception, fraud, abuse, and failures to protect migrants, while destination and home countries fail to take responsibility for oversight. Labor migration is often characterized as beneficial to the migrants, along with both sending and receiving countries. While the logic of mutual advantage has a place in considering labor migration justice, especially considering the scale of global unemployment, there should be important constraints on such programs. These include requirements to ensure robust measures are in place that can offer reasonable human rights protections for migrant workers. The chapter discusses which rights deserve protection. There is scope for migrants to trade off protection of certain rights in exchange for labor market access, if they so choose. The chapter also offers principles to navigate which rights are “tradable” and which deserve rigorous protection.