Melbourne Law School - Theses

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End date: 2022 × Start date: 2010 × Type: PhD thesis × Subject: international human rights law × Subject: labour migration ×

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    Protecting the child-parent relationship: the place of children’s rights in temporary labour migration
    Jayasuriya, Rasika Ramburuth ( 2019)
    Low-waged, temporary labour migration (TLM) is a global phenomenon that involves the migration of workers for months or years at a time generally without their dependent children. This thesis examines how policies governing this form of migration interfere with provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) (‘CRC’) that protect the child-parent relationship and parental role in children’s lives. The specific CRC provisions examined in this thesis include children’s rights to be cared for by their parents as far as possible under Art 7; to maintain direct and regular contact and relations with their parents if separated transnationally under Art 10(2); to receive direction and guidance from their parents under Art 5; and to have their family life (which includes their relationship with their parents) protected against arbitrary interference under Art 16. It also examines State obligations under the CRC to provide appropriate assistance to parents to enable them to fulfil their responsibilities and role as their children’s primary caregivers under Art 18, which includes assisting parents to provide for their children’s overall development needs under Art 27. This thesis argues that, to date, States have failed to address or justify interferences with these children’s rights caused by TLM policies that deliberately disrupt the child-parent relationship. It combines a human rights-based framework with qualitative social science research to understand State duties under human rights law to protect the child-parent relationship; identify potential harms to children’s rights caused by TLM policies that create prolonged periods of child-parent separation; and recommend measures to reduce interferences with children’s rights by better supporting the maintenance of the child-parent relationship in the context of TLM. The rights examined in this thesis are considered in light of general obligations and principles in international human rights law that include the obligation on States to give due consideration to children’s best interests in all policies affecting them; the principle that the family is the most fundamental unit in society entitled to protection by the State; and the principle of international cooperation, which entails that the protection of children’s rights is a shared responsibility between labour-sending and labour-receiving countries.