Introduction: Global Migration Governance

Abstract

This Introduction offers a background to the global governance of migration. It argues that although there is no coherent UN-based multilateral framework regulating states' responses to migration, this is not to say that there is no global migration governance. Rather, global migration governance can be characterized by a fragmented tapestry of institutions at the bilateral, regional, inter-regional, and multilateral levels, which vary according to different types of migration. The Introduction provides a conceptual framework that can be applied to understand (a) what, institutionally, global migration governance is; (b) why, politically, it exists in the way that it does; (c) how, normatively, one can ground claims about ‘better’ global migration governance.