The Global Compact for Migration (GCM), International Solidarity and Civil Society Participation: a Stakeholder’s Perspective

Abstract

A distinguishing feature of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is its “whole-of-society” approach, which includes states, but also engages a “broad multi-stakeholder” partnership to address global migration “in all its dimensions” (GCM 2018, para 15). As one of the stakeholders that participated in the shaping and implementation of this new global normative instrument, we suggest that a spirit of international solidarity can be located in the cooperative and consensual processes and platforms that make up its architecture. Drawing on the English school’s conception of international society, we argue that the GCM has advanced international solidarity in the acceptance by stakeholders of agreed core principles relating to migration governance and in the creation of spaces and platforms for whole-of-society dialogue. It is within these emergent spaces of the GCM that the possibility of concrete and meaningful improvement in the lives of migrants and other people on the move can be made.