I am delighted to post on IntLawGrrls for the first time and to present my new monograph The Human Rights of Migrant Women in International and European Law. This book starts from the consideration that European and domestic migration law indirectly discriminates against third-country national migrant women, and aims to answer the question of whether human and fundamental rights law can remedy this gender bias.

The book carries out an analysis of significant instances of indirect discrimination against migrant women within EU immigration law, as well as in the domestic orders of Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. It then critically reviews human and fundamental rights jurisprudence at supranational and domestic level, with a specific focus on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as the domestic jurisdictions of Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. By doing so, it identifies effective judicial interpretations to ensure migrant women’s enjoyment of their rights and entitlements in conditions of equality and non-discrimination.

The book is divided in two parts. The first focuses on family reunification and care, analysing the gendered effects of income requirements in European family reunification regimes as well as migrant women’s access to residence rights on the grounds of childcare. A second part of the book concerns the employment realm, with a focus on discrimination against migrant women workers and labour exploitation in the domestic work sector.

Ultimately, this book argues that a normative and judicial awareness of migrant women’s most common difficulties in their host countries is crucial to ensure the full enjoyment of their right to equality and non-discrimination. For this purpose, it is equally important for law to focus not only on moments of crisis and victimisation, but also on prevention through an effective protection of migrant women’s socio-economic rights.