MIGRATION AND LABOR LAWS IN COMPARISON
Migration Jurisprudence from the South
What courts have decided about migrant workers, and whether it held. Each decision comes with the question, what the court decided, the arguments it accepted or rejected, what happened afterwards, and a plain-language summary in English and Indonesian.
Work in progress: please read with care. This collection is still being built and checked. Most summaries were prepared from the courts' own summaries, law reports and news coverage, and have not yet been checked line by line against the judgments. Some dates, case numbers and outcomes may be incomplete or wrong; details still to confirm are shown in [square brackets]. Entries marked “Unchecked candidate” are leads for researchers only: they have no summary yet and may contain errors. Do not rely on this page for a case of your own: read the judgment itself, or ask the Legal Clinic.
About this collection: focus and comparators
Focus: jurisprudence beyond Europe and North America. Most collections of migration case law are built around European and United States courts. This one starts from courts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Pacific, including courts in countries of origin and the Inter-American and African systems. Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, and a few from other European and United States courts, are kept, clearly marked, as points of comparison; each decision page names its closest European Court comparator.
AFTER THE JUDGMENT
Was the decision carried out?
A judgment is only a beginning. Each entry records what followed: a law changed, a remedy paid, a ruling undone by a new law, or nothing. The bar counts the decisions shown above. It describes this collection only and does not rank countries.
METHOD
How decisions are chosen and coded
This is version 0.1, a first set of decisions. The collection deliberately centres jurisprudence from outside Europe and North America: courts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, the Inter-American Court, and global bodies. European and United States decisions appear only as comparison points, listed after the others and marked "Comparison". We chose well-documented decisions that turn on the rights of migrant workers and their families. Each decision is coded for the level of the court (national, regional or international), for whether a national court sits in the destination country or the country of origin, and for outcome, arguments, stage of migration and follow-up.
- Every entry is marked S for now. Its summary was prepared from the court's own summaries and from secondary sources. It is being checked line by line against the judgment, and an entry changes to P once that check is done. Details still to be confirmed appear in square brackets.
- Type of case: criminal (a prosecution), private (a dispute between private parties, such as a wage claim against an employer or agency), administrative (a challenge to an agency decision on ordinary legal grounds), or constitutional and human rights (constitutional review, fundamental-rights petitions, and complaints to regional and international bodies). Each decision has one type, coded from the court, the parties and the arguments.
- Outcome is coded from the side of the worker or migrant. "Worker side won" means the court accepted the main claim made for them.
- Counts of accepted arguments describe this collection, not litigation as a whole. Courts and claimants choose which cases are brought and reported, so these counts are not success rates.
- Gulf states and parts of South Asia: few judgments are published in full, so some entries rest on news reports of the decision and say so. They will be checked against official texts where these exist.
Codebook
SOURCES
Where the decisions come from
Every decision page lists its sources under “Sources” or “Where to check”, with a direct link to the judgment wherever a public copy exists. Where a court does not publish judgments, the entry rests on a report and says “as reported”. The number after each source is how many decisions link to it. The full list is in sources.csv, and each decision’s links are in the “sources” column of decisions.csv. Every decision also has its own page; see the list of all decisions.
Show all sources
Courts, treaty bodies and other official sites
- HUDOC European Court of Human Rights 37
- Corte Constitucional Constitutional Court, Colombia 30
- Constitutional Court of Korea 18
- Supreme Court of Canada judgments Supreme Court of Canada / Lexum 17
- Inter-American Court of Human Rights 15
- African Commission decisions African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights 12
- UN Official Document System United Nations 12
- OHCHR jurisprudence database UN Human Rights Office 12
- Constitutional Court Constitutional Court, Taiwan 10
- Courts in Japan Supreme Court of Japan 9
- Supreme Court of Israel Judicial Authority of Israel 8
- Supreme Court E-Library Supreme Court of the Philippines 6
- ICJ International Court of Justice 4
- NORMLEX International Labour Organization 4
- eLitigation Supreme Court of Singapore 4
- Mahkamah Konstitusi Constitutional Court of Indonesia 2
- Legal Reference System Hong Kong Judiciary 2
- Judiciary of Malaysia Office of the Chief Registrar, Malaysia 2
- ACERWC African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child 2
- African Court African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights 2
- SCJN Supreme Court of Justice, Mexico 2
- STF Supreme Federal Court, Brazil 2
- High Court of Australia 2
- UK Supreme Court 2
- Notable judgments Department of Justice, Hong Kong 1
- Supreme Court of India 1
- Tribunal Constitucional Constitutional Tribunal, Dominican Republic 1
- Public Defender repository Ministerio Público de la Defensa, Argentina 1
- Supreme Court of Pakistan 1
- Refworld UNHCR 1
- Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Organization of American States 1
- Supreme Court of Korea 1
- ECOWAS Court Community Court of Justice of ECOWAS 1
- Federal Court of Appeal decisions Federal Court of Appeal, Canada 1
- Supreme Court of Thailand 1
- Tribunal Constitucional Constitutional Tribunal, Chile 1
Free legal information databases
- Lawphil Arellano Law Foundation, Philippines 50
- SAFLII Southern African Legal Information Institute 34
- HKLII Hong Kong Legal Information Institute 31
- Indian Kanoon 25
- Kenya Law National Council for Law Reporting, Kenya 20
- CanLII Canadian Legal Information Institute 8
- WorldLII World Legal Information Institute 8
- CommonLII Commonwealth Legal Information Institute 7
- AustLII Australasian Legal Information Institute 7
- NZLII New Zealand Legal Information Institute 5
- BAILII British and Irish Legal Information Institute 4
- Justia US Supreme Court Justia 4
- Versa (Cardozo Law) Cardozo School of Law, translations of Israeli Supreme Court judgments 1
- PacLII Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute 1
Reports and news (used where the judgment is not published)
- lawlibrary.org.za 56
- africanlii.org 23
- tbinternet.ohchr.org 10
- malawilii.org 5
- namiblii.org 5
- zimlii.org 4
- Amnesty International 3
- Business & Human Rights Resource Centre 3
- zambialii.org 3
- kathmandupost.com 2
- Human Rights Watch 2
- khaleejtimes.com 2
- lesotholii.org 2
- mongabay.co.id 1
- heraldk.com 1
- ITUC International Trade Union Confederation 1
- ambitojuridico.com 1
- ft.lk 1
- sundaytimes.lk 1
- malaymail.com 1
- mothership.sg 1
- prachatai.com 1
- benarnews.org 1
- rfa.org 1
- timeskuwait.com 1
- siasat.com 1
- HURIGHTS OSAKA Asia-Pacific Human Rights Information Center 1
- koreatimes.co.kr 1
- nst.com.my 1
- thesun.my 1
- politica.expansion.mx 1
- argaam.com 1
- gulfbusiness.com 1
- adaderana.lk 1
- dailymirror.lk 1
- middleeasteye.net 1
- me.peoplemattersglobal.com 1
- emirates247.com 1
- arabtimesonline.com 1
- asiatimes.com 1
- menafn.com 1
- timesofoman.com 1
- thedailystar.net 1
- old.thefinancialexpress.com.bd 1
- tanzlii.org 1
Some links open a search on the database rather than the judgment itself; they are labelled “(search)”. Links built from a case citation are being checked one by one.
DATA
Downloads and citation
Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/. The summaries are ours and the judgments belong to their courts. Links point to official or public copies.
This page summarizes court decisions for research and advocacy. It is not legal advice. If you know a decision that should be here, or you find a mistake, write to secretariat@theimr.org.