Article: An international human rights law of migration? Reflections on the place of a right to immigrate Journal: International Journal of Migration and Border Studies (IJMBS) 2026 Vol.9 No.6 pp.132 - 150 Abstract: This article argues that there is such a thing as an international human rights law of migration, but that it is essentially truncated. Human rights have been conceived as accompanying the trajectory of migrants as humans but have historically had little to say about migration itself. This has left international human rights law strangely disarmed and quiescent when faced with assertions of a broad 'right to exclude' by states. By contrast, the article contends that placing the idea of a right to immigrate at the centre of an international human rights law of migration makes better sense of the predicament of mobile persons. Such a right may not currently be recognised in positive international law, but it is coherent within the overall economy of human rights as a universal project whose vocation is to compensate for some of the constraints imposed on liberties by the international legal system itself. Encompassing a right to immigrate within international human rights law maximises the fundamental aspiration to self-determine through human mobility, aligns the regimes of domestic and cross-border freedom of movement, and makes it possible to conceptualise legally permissible limitations to immigration. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: An international human rights law of migration? Reflections on the place of a right to immigrate

Authors: Frédéric Mégret

Addresses: Faculty of Law, McGill University, 3674 Peel Street, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1W9, Canada

Abstract: This article argues that there is such a thing as an international human rights law of migration, but that it is essentially truncated. Human rights have been conceived as accompanying the trajectory of migrants as humans but have historically had little to say about migration itself. This has left international human rights law strangely disarmed and quiescent when faced with assertions of a broad 'right to exclude' by states. By contrast, the article contends that placing the idea of a right to immigrate at the centre of an international human rights law of migration makes better sense of the predicament of mobile persons. Such a right may not currently be recognised in positive international law, but it is coherent within the overall economy of human rights as a universal project whose vocation is to compensate for some of the constraints imposed on liberties by the international legal system itself. Encompassing a right to immigrate within international human rights law maximises the fundamental aspiration to self-determine through human mobility, aligns the regimes of domestic and cross-border freedom of movement, and makes it possible to conceptualise legally permissible limitations to immigration.

Keywords: human rights; international law; sovereignty; right to exclude; right to immigrate; right to emigrate; mobility rights; rights limitations; borders.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2026.156399

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2026 Vol.9 No.6, pp.132 - 150

Received: 01 Jul 2025
Accepted: 27 Mar 2026
Published online: 16 Sep 2026 *

Title: An international human rights law of migration? Reflections on the place of a right to immigrate

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