Violations of the rights to an adequate standard of living, health and education of people on the move are structural rather than incidental in many regions of the world. In the Global South, such violations are closely linked to efforts by the Global North to stem migration flows from the Global South to the Global North. Indeed, cooperation on migration control between sponsor States in the Global North and partner States in the Global South results in the containment of many people on the move in Global South States with a relatively weak track record in terms of socio-economic rights. Although scholarship pays scant attention to the fact that migration control agreements result in widespread violations of the socio-economic rights of people on the move contained in the Global South, this raises questions as to the responsibility of the various states involved for their plight. Therefore, this study seeks to answer the following question: to what extent and how do violations of socio-economic rights of people on the move give rise to the international responsibility of States involved in cooperative migration control? It can be further broken down into two research questions, which structure this study.

First, however, the study starts by examining the plight of people on the move in partner States in the Mediterranean, the Asia Pacific and the Americas. Chapter II demonstrates that many risk suff ering violations of their socio-economic rights, such as an inadequate standard of living, lack of access to education and health care, and vulnerability to labour exploitation. Furthermore, States often implement multiple measures in parallel and their centre of gravity shifts from the Global North to the Global South as sponsor States seek to avoid triggering their obligations towards people on the move by increasingly cooperating with partner States. Contemporary forms of cooperation include people transfers; the provision of funding, training and equipment; information sharing; and diplomatic relations and development aid conditionality. Crucially, the relation between violations of the socio-economic rights of people on the move in partner States and cooperative migration control depends on the causal link between the two and the question whether States are unable or unwilling to realise the socio-economic rights of people on the move affected by these policies.