Recent decades have seen remoulded or new transnational migration systems across the globe. Inter- and intra-regional migration have been propelled by major political and economic changes in Eastern Europe, massive growth of industrial and service economies such as China and India and increasing conflict- and climate driven refugee movements. This is accompanied by an unprecedented mobility of capital, restructuring of economies and flexibilisation of labour markets. Hence, the new political economy of migration is linked to informalisation and precarisation of work with re-enforced ethnic, racial and gender segmentations, as well as deteriorating social rights.

On this background major international organizations have sought to establish global normative frameworks for human and labour rights and fair rules for cross-border movement. Among them is the UN initiative for ‘fair globalisation’. Another is the ILO’s ‘decent work agenda’. In addition, a range of civil society movements are engaged in redefining issues of migration and global governance in the nexus of human rights, social rights and labour rights.

A Forum for Dialogue on Migration, “Decent Work” and Global Governance

This global scenario of structural change was the context for the Labour Rights as Human Rights? conference in Norrköping, Sweden, organised by REMESO (Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity, and Society) at Linköping University in collaboration with the INMD (International Network for Migration and Development), under the auspices of UNESCO-MOST and with financial support from The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS) and the Swedish Research Council (VR).