Statelessness, Human Rights and Gender: Irregular Migrant Workers from Burma in Thailand

This book explores the developing relationship between statelessness and migration. Migration law is setting the new parameters for international protection. Irregular migration is producing new forms of statelessness. International conventions on statelessness, refugees and migrant workers and international human rights instruments do not provide effective protection for these contemporary groups of stateless persons. The case study of Burmese irregular migrant workers in Thailand demonstrate that women and children are among the most unprotected because of the gendered construction of statelessness. The book concludes firstly that the 1999 CEDAW Protocol is an avenue through which stateless women may pursue redress. Secondly, it argues that it is imperative to set international law limits on state powers over immigration matters.