Applied Intersectionality in International Human Rights Law Implementation

The multiple disadvantages faced by women migrant workers reflect complex and layered socio-legal problems. This research aims to develop a systemic set of legal recommendations for improving the Chinese domestic legal system to ensure effective legal protection of female migrant domestic workers’ fundamental human rights and their right to decent working conditions. In this study, intersectionality theory is applied to display the overlapping forms of disadvantage faced by the vulnerable. The implications of existing international human rights treaties and international labour conventions are analysed in an effort to generate recommendations for improving China’s domestic laws relating to Hukou reform, discrimination elimination and working conditions. As such this study can be seen as a crucial first step in designing a contextually sensitive approach aimed at solving concrete problems in a concrete social setting.

“For human rights studies to remain a relevant field of study for generations to come, it should invest in inclusivity, an interdisciplinary approach, and a problem-solving angle. Peng's book does exactly that and, therefore, it is an asset to the field. Consequently, it deserves the widest audience possible.”

Tom Zwart, Professor of Cross-cultural Law
Utrecht University

“I am positive that more research of this kind that combines international outlook and renovated theories in solving down-to-earth problems can truly promote realization of human rights across different cultures and countries.”

Wan Exiang, Professor of International Law
Wuhan University Institute of International Law



Qinxuan Peng (1987) is Associate Research Professor at Wuhan University Institute of International Law (Wuhan University), Senior Researcher at the Cross-Culture Human Rights Centre (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and editor of Wuhan University International Law Review. She obtained her Doctor of Law degree at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (Utrecht University).