This paper provides a conceptual discussion of the inter-linkages between rights-based approaches to development and economic migration. Rather than focusing on a legalistic understanding of migrants' rights, the starting point of this paper is the perspective of political processes involved in voicing and claiming rights by incorporating a transnational and activist perspective to assess the potential for enhancing the lives of migrant workers, their families and multiple communities. The paper starts with a summary of the major shifts in contemporary migration trends and concomitant policy concerns, to then move on to discuss the 'old' and 'new' aspects of the migration-development nexus in view of the implications for migrants' rights. A brief general discussion of rights-based approaches is followed by the attempt to bring developmental, transnational and activist perspectives on migrants' rights together—a necessity to advance the discursive and policy agenda to the benefit of foreign workers, as argued here.
展开▼
