BOOK REVIEW The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration

International human rights are “inalienable, indivisible, and universal. ” One cannot bargain away one’s rights (“inalienable”); human rights are a whole with economic rights and civil rights being inter-dependent (“indivisible”); and human rights do not depend on citizenship or membership in a nation state (“universal”). A human being does not lose his or her human rights by crossing a border. However in state regulation of the entrance and stay of temporary migrant workers, the ideal of universal human rights clashes with the prerogatives of sovereignty and power. Migrant workers (particularly those classified as “low-skilled”) find that the surrender of their rights is the “price of admission ” to labor immigration programs which allow them to provide their families back home with the means of survival. This is the global phenomenon described and analyzed by Martin Ruhs, university lecturer in political economy and senior researcher at the Centre on Migration