Polycentric governance of transit migration: A relational perspective from the Balkans and the Middle East

Maria Koinova

doi:10.1017/s0260210521000693

Abstract

AbstractState and non-state actors interact in both formal and informal ways during migration governance. Yet, we know little about such interactions, especially in the field of transit migration, a largely regional phenomenon. Here the categories of migrants are fluid between refugees, regular and irregular migrants, including those from conflict regions. Governance takes place also informally. Building on relational theories in International Relations, this article introduces a novel relational approach to polycentric governance. I argue that at the centre of such governance are not simply institutions or migration regimes, but power-laden relations among governmental, non-governmental, supranational, and non-state actors, as well as sending and destination states. These form architectures of partially official, partially informal dynamics that govern transit migration in a particular world region. Such architectures are based on mechanisms of cooperation, conditionality, containment, contestation, and others, combined in regionally specific ways. The mechanisms manifest themselves differently depending on how actors are embedded in places with different political regimes and statehood capacities. The article illustrates this relational perspective to polycentric governance with comparative evidence from the Balkans and the Middle East.

Highlights

The Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees (2018) established comprehensive standards for facilitating safe and orderly migration
The article illustrates this relational perspective to polycentric governance with comparative evidence from the Balkans and the Middle East
Thereby this article advances the need to look at transit migration governance from a polycentric perspective in the first place, and to consider a new relational way of thinking about polycentricity where the analysis focuses on the power-laden social relationships that bind different actors when governing

Summary

Introduction

The Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees (2018) established comprehensive standards for facilitating safe and orderly migration. This article seeks to categorise such power-laden relationships in the Balkans and the Middle East, two regions in the European neighbourhood with abundant transit migration. This piece does not feature an explanatory theory about transit migration governance, but a novel lens into polycentric governance architectures formed regionally on the basis of social relations. These are a solid set of formal and informal rules emerging from interactions of multiple actors at different scales. Critical analyses of border regimes highlight the Eurocentric and securitised connotations of the term ‘transit migration’.14 It has become a ‘convenient euphemism for subjects that are potentially politically delicate’ and perceived as a threat. Multiple actors connect for ‘polyvocal’ interventions in managing irregular flows, often based on securitised discourses or everyday practices. Aside from EU institutions and transit states, this includes non-state actors, such as NGOs, as well as EU citizens who perform ‘border work’, which they do through ‘envisioning, constructing, maintaining and erasing borders’ and creating ‘vernacular’ imaginaries of border security in their everyday lives. In addition, surveillance technologies are deployed at borders and via ‘remote control’, reaching deep into states’ territories through a system of passports, visas, and pre-screening among passenger carriers. Critical studies further highlight that migrants and refugees are not passive recipients of these policies, but actively voice, contest, and seek to participate in creating more just terms of their governance.

Maria Koinova

Findings

Conclusions