Handbook on Migration and Human Rights
Published on 12. September 2025
Book
Hardback
392 pages
978-1-0353-0224-6 (ISBN)
Description
This Research Handbook examines the complex issues faced by migrants and refugees in securing their human rights. By challenging and reformulating the crisis narrative often perpetuated by states and international organizations, it provides a cutting-edge, in-depth investigation of key themes central to the human rights implications of migration.
Adopting an intersectional, interdisciplinary and gendered approach, the Research Handbook identifies the human rights challenges faced by migrants and refugees, especially women, girls and LGBTIQ+ persons, as well as the complex questions faced by states and supranational institutions in addressing diversity and managing human mobility. It considers socio-economic, health, and environmental crises, such as climate change-induced displacement, through a critical lens to determine the impact of these issues on the lives of migrants. The Handbook includes an analysis of global and local solutions to the fragilities of migration and refugee protection regimes, including those expressed by migrants themselves. Ultimately, it argues that the 'migration crisis' rhetoric is inaccurate, and that states' efforts ought to be directed at offering durable solutions to structural challenges ensuring respect of human rights for all.
The Handbook on Migration and Human Rights is an essential resource for students and academics in international relations, migration, human rights and refugee law. Policymakers, UN and regional human rights bodies, and legal practitioners will greatly benefit from its unique insights into global and local governance.
Adopting an intersectional, interdisciplinary and gendered approach, the Research Handbook identifies the human rights challenges faced by migrants and refugees, especially women, girls and LGBTIQ+ persons, as well as the complex questions faced by states and supranational institutions in addressing diversity and managing human mobility. It considers socio-economic, health, and environmental crises, such as climate change-induced displacement, through a critical lens to determine the impact of these issues on the lives of migrants. The Handbook includes an analysis of global and local solutions to the fragilities of migration and refugee protection regimes, including those expressed by migrants themselves. Ultimately, it argues that the 'migration crisis' rhetoric is inaccurate, and that states' efforts ought to be directed at offering durable solutions to structural challenges ensuring respect of human rights for all.
The Handbook on Migration and Human Rights is an essential resource for students and academics in international relations, migration, human rights and refugee law. Policymakers, UN and regional human rights bodies, and legal practitioners will greatly benefit from its unique insights into global and local governance.
Reviews / Votes
'The Handbook deftly chronicles the paradox of our time: the proliferation of human rights instruments alongside the deepening exclusion of migrants. It is a timely call to interrogate how international law can evolve to meet the enduring and intersectional demands of migrant protection and ensure respect for human dignity across borders.' -- Claudia Flores, Yale Law School, USA 'Elegantly curated, twenty chapters by established and emerging scholars tackle key governance issues pertaining to migration and human rights, covering the rule of law, diversity management and the polycrisis of socio-economic, health and environmental inequality. The Research Handbook offers fresh perspectives on how to align multiscalar governance with migrant and refugee rights.' -- Judy Fudge, McMaster University, CanadaMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cheltenham
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 169 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-0353-0224-6 (9781035302246)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Edited by Ruth Rubio Marin, Professor, University of Seville, Spain and School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute, Italy, Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, Tenured Professor in International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Murcia, Spain and Member of the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls, Benedita Menezes Queiroz, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal and Fulvia Staiano, Associate Professor of International Law, Giustino Fortunato University, Italy
Content
Contents
1 Introduction to the Handbook on Migration and Human Rights 1
Ruth Rubio Marin, Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, Benedita Menezes Queiroz
and Fulvia Staiano
PART I CONFLICT, GOVERNANCE AND RULE OF LAW
2 A crisis of human rights: litigation as governance at the border 13
Jaya Ramji-Nogales
3 Protracted conflicts and the protection of women in refugee law 32
Christel Querton
4 A holistic approach to human mobility: the Model International Mobility
Convention 52
Michael Doyle and Dorothea Koehn
5 The International Rule of Law Necropower's use of human rights
discourses in new asylum and migration laws 66
Ariadna Estevez
6 Security meets gender equality and women's human rights: the
securitisation of trafficking in women for sexual exploitation at EU level 81
Lucrecia Rubio Grundell
PART II DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT
7 Solidarity towards distress migrants: how changing frontline communities
depend on states to build a new public space 97
Jacqueline Bhabha, Vasileia Digidiki and Urszula Markowska-Manista
8 Human trafficking in CEDAW: a global, regional and domestic analysis
from the perspective of South and Southeast Asia 116
Ramona Vijeyarasa
9 Managing crisis: multiculturalism and the politics of exclusion 141
Giorgia Baldi
10 Intersectionality-driven human rights standards to protect migrant women
against violence: CEDAW and the Istanbul Convention 162
Lourdes Peroni
11 Assessing vulnerability: fundamental rights protection in SOGI asylum
claims under EU law 181
Benedita Menezes Queiroz
12 Gender inequity for women in migration and family law relocation
contexts: systems falling short in applications to stay and leave 197
Melany Toombs and Jiaying Goh May
13 The paradoxes of vulnerability: women, migration and gender equality 216
Veronica Federico
PART III SOCIO-ECONOMIC, HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
14 Crisis, domestic workers and socio-economic rights 238
Vera Pavlou
15 Transnational 'granny-nannies' - promoting visibility and rights for aging
caregivers in transnational families 256
Edit Frenyo
16 The crossroads of the gender backlash and the anti-migration crisis: a view
from (undocumented) migrant women's and girls' human rights 281
Dorothy Estrada-Tanck
17 Transnational mobility rights and the COVID-19 travel restrictions 296
Timothy Jacob-Owens and Lorenzo Piccoli
18 Climate change-induced displacement in the light of states' duties of
international protection: lessons from the past and a look to the future 312
Fulvia Staiano
19 A human rights-based approach to protect environmentally displaced
persons 325
Andrea Pacheco Pacifico
20 Facing the polycrisis: human-environmental security for planet earth 348
John Morrissey
1 Introduction to the Handbook on Migration and Human Rights 1
Ruth Rubio Marin, Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, Benedita Menezes Queiroz
and Fulvia Staiano
PART I CONFLICT, GOVERNANCE AND RULE OF LAW
2 A crisis of human rights: litigation as governance at the border 13
Jaya Ramji-Nogales
3 Protracted conflicts and the protection of women in refugee law 32
Christel Querton
4 A holistic approach to human mobility: the Model International Mobility
Convention 52
Michael Doyle and Dorothea Koehn
5 The International Rule of Law Necropower's use of human rights
discourses in new asylum and migration laws 66
Ariadna Estevez
6 Security meets gender equality and women's human rights: the
securitisation of trafficking in women for sexual exploitation at EU level 81
Lucrecia Rubio Grundell
PART II DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT
7 Solidarity towards distress migrants: how changing frontline communities
depend on states to build a new public space 97
Jacqueline Bhabha, Vasileia Digidiki and Urszula Markowska-Manista
8 Human trafficking in CEDAW: a global, regional and domestic analysis
from the perspective of South and Southeast Asia 116
Ramona Vijeyarasa
9 Managing crisis: multiculturalism and the politics of exclusion 141
Giorgia Baldi
10 Intersectionality-driven human rights standards to protect migrant women
against violence: CEDAW and the Istanbul Convention 162
Lourdes Peroni
11 Assessing vulnerability: fundamental rights protection in SOGI asylum
claims under EU law 181
Benedita Menezes Queiroz
12 Gender inequity for women in migration and family law relocation
contexts: systems falling short in applications to stay and leave 197
Melany Toombs and Jiaying Goh May
13 The paradoxes of vulnerability: women, migration and gender equality 216
Veronica Federico
PART III SOCIO-ECONOMIC, HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
14 Crisis, domestic workers and socio-economic rights 238
Vera Pavlou
15 Transnational 'granny-nannies' - promoting visibility and rights for aging
caregivers in transnational families 256
Edit Frenyo
16 The crossroads of the gender backlash and the anti-migration crisis: a view
from (undocumented) migrant women's and girls' human rights 281
Dorothy Estrada-Tanck
17 Transnational mobility rights and the COVID-19 travel restrictions 296
Timothy Jacob-Owens and Lorenzo Piccoli
18 Climate change-induced displacement in the light of states' duties of
international protection: lessons from the past and a look to the future 312
Fulvia Staiano
19 A human rights-based approach to protect environmentally displaced
persons 325
Andrea Pacheco Pacifico
20 Facing the polycrisis: human-environmental security for planet earth 348
John Morrissey