Book Review: International Migration Statistics: Guidelines for Improving Data Collection Systems

chapters reviewing the status of international migration for employment focusing upon the right to development and the development of international law pertaining to migrant workers and their families as aliens. Part II treats the universal standards relating to the protection of migrant workers and their families in two chapters one devoted to the International Labor Organization standards, the other to the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families. Part III consists of four chapters examining the regional protection of rights of migrant workers and their families in Europe. It examines closely the Council of Europe's Human Rights Conventions and the standards adopted by the European Community. Besides reviewing the relevant conventions and case law, the author discusses in full detail the economic, social, cultural, political and residence rights of migrant workers in the host country. He covers the relevant national legislation of the major receiving nations: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The book has a copious index and an extensive and useful bibliography. This book examines the international human rights instruments as attempts to bridge the divide between the rights of nation-states to build their walls of state sovereignty and the rights of those employed in countries other than their own nation of birth to protections comparable with those afforded its national citizens. Professor Cholewinski argues the case that our treatment of the alien in our midst is a measure of our own humanity. How well we protect migrant workers and their families advances the rights and interests of all who live in and work in our system of nation-states, both citizens and noncitizens alike. The book is exhaustive in its descriptive detail but fails to analyze why certain nations subscribe to international standards or not, become signature nations to the international agreements, or indeed why the receiving nations are raising barriers despite international agreements to protect the rights of migrant workers. This is an excellent library reference volume and is a book of considerable interest to all scholars of migration and of international law. It is not directed to the general reader.