Mixed Migration and the vagaries of doctrine formation since 2015

Abstract

The 2018 Global Compacts on Migration and on Refugees acknowledge mixed migration – both as flow and as motivation – whilst at the same time trying very hard to (re)establish clear boundaries between the two ideal types of people mobility. Mixed migration is deeply problematic. It is the condition of possibility for “illegal migration” to be intelligible in policy terms, but it is also an expression, empirically, of reality. The notion of mixed migration had been a solution in the 1970s and 1980s for doctrine formation in the context of governing international mobility. Today, by insisting on the dubious distinction, the two Global Compacts are turning mixed migration from a solution into a problem, even as they draw on the normative framing of human rights and sustainable development. Does this move shift perspective rather than fundamentally achieving transformation of the doctrine towards a more progressive global approach in governing international mobility? Here, I argue, based on conceptual analysis of the Global Compacts, that they express a transformation rather than either returning to the conceptual past or offering something entirely new. What has not changed, however, is that in the search for solutions to governing international migration there is a reproduction of individuals as gendered and racialized subjects of global politics.