Introduction: International Migration and Global Governance

Abstract

This article serves as the introduction for this special issue of Global Governance on international migration. It presents some of the key facts, figures, concepts, and debates on international migration that appear in the articles that follow, and outlines their main arguments. Five arguments in support of greater international cooperation and more formal processes of global governance on international migration are presented here. First, contemporary international migration is now occurring at unprecedented levels and has a truly global reach. Second, international migration can no longer effectively be managed or controlled by national migration policies, and greater international cooperation is required to achieve national goals in international migration. Third, there are growing numbers of migrants around the world who are vulnerable and exploited, and insufficiently protected by either states or international institutions. Fourth, emerging structural features in the global economy, alongside the effects of climate change, are likely to significantly increase the scale of international migration worldwide, and present new management and protection challenges. Finally, momentum for change is slowly developing. KEYWORDS: international migration, global governance. ********** IN CONTRAST TO MANY OTHER CROSS-BORDER ISSUES OF OUR TIME, SUCH as trade, finance, or the environment, international migration lacks a coherent institutional framework at the global level. There is no UN migration organization; rather there is a network of intergovernmental organizations within and outside the UN that focus on specific aspects of international migration. States remain the principal actors in migration governance, and delegate responsibility to regional organizations or international institutions in only limited circumstances. The legal and normative framework affecting international migrants cannot be found in a single document, but is derived from customary law, a variety of binding global and regional legal instruments, nonbinding agreements, and policy understandings reached by states at the global and regional level. Many elements of this framework are not migration specific, but address broader questions of individual rights, state responsibility, and interstate relations. Only in the area of refugee movements, and more recently migrant smuggling and human trafficking, have a large number of governments agreed to binding international laws and norms, but even in these areas implementation remains a challenge. (1) The reluctance of most states to yield national control over international migration is understandable. Sovereign states have the right--indeed, the responsibility--to determine who enters and remains on their territory. And international migration can also impact on other essential aspects of state sovereignty, including economic competitiveness, national and public security, and social cohesion. In addition, some of the challenges to more effective international cooperation on international migration at times can appear insurmountable. In particular, it pits developed economies that want to protect national labor markets and admit migrant workers on only a selective basis against developing countries with rapidly expanding and youthful populations that demand greater and more unrestricted access to those labor markets. At least some of the responsibility for slow progress in developing more global governance on international migration also lies with existing international institutions that are unable or unwilling to extend their mandates, often enter into competition with one another when they do, and fail to cooperate on even the most basic of issues such as common terminology or shared access to data on migration. What is more, even among advocates for reform, there is little consensus on how far-reaching the changes should be. Ambitions range from more effective regional cooperation, through more coherent global cooperation, to the development of a new legal and normative framework and new institutional arrangements to deliver the reforms. …