Martin Ruhs ’ The Price of Rights: Flexible accommodation vs. all-encompassing norms? Francisco Alba

This book deals with an important topic in the contemporary world; a world that has been, since 1948, under the spotlight of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Within this topic, the debate on the extension of rights to migrants has gained saliency in the last two to three decades. This is not a minor issue due to the traditional juridical distinction between citizens and non-citizens in a world organized in nation-states that has allowed a differ-ential treatment between nationals and foreigners regarding the rights each group could be entitled to. The potential implications of this debate are enormous for all the actors involved, migrants, citizens, nation-states, and the world as a whole. Within this broad debate a more specific one has been taking place regarding the role international instruments may play in the protection of rights. In particular, as this book reflects, the role of ILO Conventions 97 and 143, and more specifically, the role of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW); a debate grounded, in part, in the fact that more than twenty years after this Convention was adopted by the UN, in 1990, ‘fewer than fifty countries have ratified it—and the great majority of these countries are predominantl