Anuscheh Farahat delivered the eighth Sarah van Walsum Lecture 2022 on the campus of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
The Sarah van Walsum lecture is the annual opening of the Master’s program of International Migration and Refugee Law and commemorates our late colleague Sarah van Walsum. Anuscheh Farahat is professor of Public Law, Migration Law and Human Rights Law at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. Her lecture is entitled “The fundamental inequalities of labour migration”.
Abstract:
Labour migration regimes are characterised by fundamental inequalities on at least three levels: access to migration, discriminatory treatment inside the host country, inequality between countries of origin and destination. While the legal standards applicable to these three inequalities vary, the three dimensions are intertwined and often mutually reinforce each other. In my lecture, I will first introduce the three dimensions of inequality in labour migration with a specific focus on their interrelation. I will show that the dominant selection criteria in labour migration law often reinforce existing inequalities based on class, race, and nationality. At the same time, the perspective of migrants and the perspective of countries of origin is structurally underrepresented, if not neglected, in the regulation of labour migration. In the last part of the lecture, I will provide some ideas, how we could try to use the law, in particular human rights law, to remedy some of the identified inequalities and disparities and provide for a more participatory conception of labour migration.