Transnational Mobility, the International Law of Aliens, and the Origins of Global Migration Law

Frédéric Mégret

doi:10.1017/aju.2017.12

Abstract

To speak of a “global migration law” is challenging, perhaps even quite provocative, in an era in which walls are being continuously erected at borders and seas transformed into mass graves. The ambition of international law often seems to be to rescue what can still be saved: the refugee regime for example, or minimally decent treatment of migrants once under the jurisdiction of a third country. A global law of migration, then, might be as much if not more the law of obstacles to human mobility than a body of law premised on a more fundamental commitment to freedom of movement.

Highlights

To speak of a “global migration law” is challenging, perhaps even quite provocative, in an era in which walls are being continuously erected at borders and seas transformed into mass graves
In searching for ways to imagine global migration law as the repository of a greater normative ambition, I want to look at how the past of international law, notably its nineteenth and early twentieth century past, might provide some keys to imagining an international legal order that puts at the heart of its interrogation not the coercive management of mobility but the very possibility of a right to migrate
In this I am inspired by the work of Vincent Chetail on the question,[1] albeit with more of an emphasis on the rise of modern, late nineteenth century international law coinciding with a high point of international legal liberalism, than on earlier canonical texts

Summary

Introduction

To speak of a “global migration law” is challenging, perhaps even quite provocative, in an era in which walls are being continuously erected at borders and seas transformed into mass graves.

Results

Conclusion