Global Compact For Migration Research Articles

Enhancing the Rights of Protection-Seeking Migrants through the Global Compact for Migration: The Case of EU Asylum Policy

Abstract This article argues that the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is not only a breakthrough for a rights-based approach in international migration governance but also an asset to the international protection system. By way of example, three key issues of the European Union’s (EU) Common European Asylum System are discussed: access to protection, reception conditions, and detention. These examples illustrate that faithfully implementing the Migration Compact would require the EU and its Member States to make significant changes in their asylum policy. The parallel emergence of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) may suggest otherwise – namely, that the GCM is not relevant for refugees and other protection-seeking migrants. However, the legal construction that best serves the object and purpose of both documents is the assumption that the two Compacts have an overlapping scope of application. The GCM addresses specific protection needs of protection-seeking migrants who are not covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention, and it serves as an umbrella, strengthening the core human rights of migrants regardless of their status, including protection-seeking migrants. Hence, the GCM improves the international protection system as a whole and should be acknowledged as such.

The International Organization for Migration as a Counterweight to States?

Abstract The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is commonly described as a functional intergovernmental organization (IGO) that performs tasks on behalf of Member States. However, recent changes within IOM suggest its transformation into a hybrid IGO that promotes widely shared norms and social goals. One facet of this transformation aims to constitute IOM as a counterweight to the Member States. Leveraging pressures to adapt to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Global Compact for Migration, IOM sought to increase its authority and autonomy by drafting the Strategic Vision. This article conducts a critical discourse analysis of the Strategic Vision to emphasize how it proclaimed the normative role of IOM; centralized its structure, funding, and organizational routines; and changed the expression of its expert and moral authority. The article demonstrates that functional IGO s do not refer to norms and social goals solely to secure legitimacy.

How freedom of movement infringes on the right to leave

This article contributes to discussions that problematize the recent proliferation of soft law instruments in relation to international migration. The Global Compact for Migration has placed soft norm instruments more formally on the agenda of plausible tools with which to regulate people's movement. I am contributing to these discussions by engaging with the question of how the amalgamation of soft and hard law contributes to and impacts on legal effects, using a postcolonial feminist lens. I do so by focusing on the interaction between freedom of movement and the right to leave in the ECOWAS area, drawing on original research material collected mainly in Abuja, Nigeria, but also in Senegal, Guinea, and The Gambia. It is argued that freedom of movement provisions, as they are promoted by the ECOWAS and largely funded by inter-governmental organizations and European donor countries, end up infringing the right to leave. In a first step, existing norms at international, continental, regional, and national level are discussed to prepare the ground to answer the question how such infringing is done. From this step, I conclude that the triple layers of legal instruments, political instruments, and programming are impairing the intent of the right to leave in the way that a politico-legal landscape is constructed within which programs operationalize freedom of movement. The next step then looks at freedom of movement programming at regional, national, and local levels by asking about the subjectivities that are created—for example the “potential migrant”; by shedding light on practices of resistance—for example in how national governments use diplomacy to disengage; and by highlighting how “home patch” talk renders those potential migrants leaving not just implausible but suspect. It is found that, in the legal and political context of West Africa, soft norms thrive. The GCM constitutes an unhelpful list of random contradictory approaches that orient ideas, policy initiatives, programs, and ultimately people, toward being fixed in place, rather than being able to leave and to move freely should they want to. This happens in-country when people have not yet begun to move.

Reviewing the reviews: the Global Compacts' added value in access to asylum procedures and immigration detention

The Global Compact for Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees are based on binding international law instruments whose provisions they complement with “best practice” standards related to the treatment of refugees and other migrants. Although the Compacts are non-binding, they provide for review mechanisms to promote compliance with Compact standards. Such oversight is important to achieve progress in implementing the Compacts' commitments. Yet, the current top-down and State-led review process does not offer an efficient platform for identifying cases of non-adherence to Compact standards. This article uses a case study approach to highlight instances of non-compliance with Compact standards in Canada, South Africa, and the European Union. We use a functionalist method of comparison to analyze State practice in these three regions in relation to (i) use of immigration detention and (ii) access to the asylum procedure, with access to healthcare as a cross-cutting issue. The article discusses how the Compacts' review mechanisms could be improved and their added value in terms of their impact on domestic migration policies. It argues that both Compact review and implementation can be improved through increased civil society participation.

Norm contestation in EU foreign policy: understanding the effects of opposition and dissidence

The EU is as a liberal normative community, where liberal norms play a central role. While contestation is considered essential within a normative community to establish the legitimacy of norms, within the EU, contestation can also challenge the validity of its foundational norms. This raises the question of how this type of contestation affects EU foreign policy. This study examines two radical forms of contestation: opposition and dissidence. Through the analysis of two case studies, namely the Global Compact for Migration and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, it becomes evident that the EU’s foreign policy system can sustain opposition, but dissidence has the potential to challenge or undermine those norms.

‘Stop the Pact‘! The Foreign Policy Impact of the Far-Right Campaigning Against the Global Compact for Migration

ABSTRACT In 2018, the UN Global Compact for Migration (GCM) was signed by a majority of countries. The GCM was the first intergovernmentally negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. Seventeen countries, among them Italy, Austria, Hungary and Poland, abstained or voted against this non-binding agreement as they feared interference in their national sovereignty. The polarising potential of the GCM, that supposedly sets global regulations against national policies, has been fuelled by far-right actors throughout Europe. Framing the decision on the GCM as a referendum against the allegedly liberal governance of migration in the European Union, movements and parties launched a multi-faceted campaign that generated protest and spurred advocacy networks transnationally. In this paper, we analyse the extent to which the campaign against the GCM influenced foreign policy in the narrow sense of countries signing or not signing the pact (short-term impact), but also in terms of discourse and policy on immigration (long-term impact), more broadly. We explore the relative role of campaigning against the GCM by contrasting four country cases – Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Italy, each of which had different governmental constellations and previous extra-parliamentary mobilisation on migration. Our work offers a first in-depth comparative study of this key campaign that has otherwise remained understudied in the field of protest, media and extremism studies. By providing a comparative analysis of the same campaign in four European countries, we aim to offer important insights on how the far right is attempting to impact decision making in foreign policy contexts and what factors might explain its mobilisation and influence capacity.

Informal agreements and quasi-legal mechanisms in EU-Africa cooperation on migration: how the EU takes advantage of the GCM commitments

Soft law plays an increasing role in EU external migration law, particularly in the context of EU-Africa cooperation on migration. A legal-analytical inquiry into the formats and functions of soft law, based on the example of EU-Africa cooperation on migration, reveals that the EU preference for soft law is functional to achieve the EU's own migration objectives in Africa, namely preventing and containing irregular migration, rather than facilitating mobility, as envisaged in the UN Global Compact for Migration. This article presents and discusses the formats of soft law in EU-Africa cooperation, distinguishing between informal agreements and quasi-legal mechanisms for cooperation, and their respective para-law and pre-law functions. It then suggests that while informal agreements set the broad objectives of international cooperation and prepare the ground for legal changes in third countries, quasi-legal mechanisms for cooperation guarantee their implementation. Their combined effects ignite broader processes of domestic reforms in the African States through a technique of legal influence.

Through the Looking-Glass: The IOM Recasting the Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration Narrative at the UN and in West Africa

ABSTRACT The stated aim of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) is to facilitate ‘safe, orderly and regular migration’. Yet, plain meaning alone fails to reveal who is shaping this formative narrative. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has played a crucial role in the preparatory phase of the GCM and is coordinating its implementation. In this article, we shed light on two out of the IOM’s global roles – a first one of coordinating the United Nations Network on Migration and the other role of organising the first International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) of the GCM. Hence, the IOM’s institutional upgrade leads us to question to what extent the IOM has designed the GCM’s narrative of ‘safe, orderly and regular migration’. Through a non-systematic document analysis of UN and IOM reports and briefs, we find evidence that the IOM adjusts the meaning behind the ‘safe, orderly and regular migration’ depending on whether a global, respectively, regional mandate is at stake. To this end, we investigate the IOM’s activities in West Africa where it faces an increasingly divided mission that lies at the intersection of its global and (trans-) regional roles. A closer look at how the IOM applies the narrative at global and West African levels reveals that it deliberately rearranges the order of the adjectives ‘safe, orderly and regular’ to produce different meanings for different policy purposes. Viewed strategically, we find the IOM generates such word combinations to either pursue its abovementioned multilevel strategy, or to affirm its new position among UN agencies. Hence, one and the same adjective deployed at the global and regional level amounts to a different meaning, with implications for policy attribution. In result, the IOM’s strategy to recast the narrative of ‘safe, regular and orderly migration’ depending on whether it is fulfilling a regional or global role, ultimately leads to greater tension within the IOM as a whole.

MIGRATION AND PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW

Starting from the perception that international migration is a process that leads from the State of origin through transit countries and perhaps even the high sea up to the entry to the State of destination this paper discusses the impact of public international law on the various stages of migration. Relevant are in this respect the rules of customary and treaty law, but also the provisions of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration of 2018 which try to create a comprehensive frame-work for the multidimensional phenomenon of international migration. These provisions do not have the legal status of hard, i.e. legally binding law, but still intent to govern the said process of migration. On the first stage the right to leave the country of origin is decisive. On the second stage the rules established for the protection of the migrants’ safety are addressed and exemplified by the existing rules for the rescue of lives in danger on the sea. At the third stage the rules for entering the country of destination become crucial. Actually here the territorial sovereignty of the State is decisive, but sovereignty is not absolute but bound by relevant customary international law as the prohibition of non-refoulement or by treaty obligations entered by the State itself. In this context the EU asylum law and the policy of pushbacks is dealt with. Issues of integration and acquisition of nationality are likewise tackled. Finally the basic view of the Global Compact at migration as a necessity and cornerstone of sustainable development leading to overemphasizing the benefits of migration vis-à-vis the difficulties of many States, especially with irregular migration, is critically assessed. Keywords: Global Compact for Migration – State sovereignty – right to leave and enter a country – smuggling of migrants – non-refoulement – pushbacks

Hard borders and soft agreements: evaluating governance within the Global Compact for Migration

Welcomed as a milestone in the governance of transnational migration, the adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration marked a significant step forward in international cooperation on migration governance. Through a critical evaluation of its normative and structural features, this paper evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, tensions and contradictions within the compact. It finds that the compact is marked by innovative and ambitious objectives and gives recognition to the diversity and complexity of migration practices. However, its amplification of state sovereignty, its perpetuation of classical liberal statist ideals, and its ambiguity concerning the social-structural and institutional conditions necessary to protect migrants’ rights and interests risk undermining its implementation and effectiveness. The paper argues that this framework is best understood as a progressive neoliberal model that relies on the virtue of states over legal and justice-based institutional mechanisms for its authority and implementation. This model risks reinforcing status quo power relations and is insufficient to achieve its stated objectives.

Comprehensive Approaches in the Global Compact for Migration and the EU Border Policies: A Critical Appraisal

The quest for safe, orderly and regular migration underpins the UN Global Compact for Migration (GCM) and translates into “comprehensive and integrated” responses to large movements of refugees and migrants. The effort to de-compartmentalise the governance of cross-border human mobility through “comprehensiveness” shapes the overall search for greater policy coherence via regime interaction and shared responsibility within the GCM. A similar effort has been made at the EU level to overcome the “silos approach” characterising the distinct policies on migration, asylum, and border management. This parallelism is particularly meaningful as the reason is twofold: at the operational level, because of the role played by the EU in fashioning the cooperation models underpinning the GCM, which enhances the relevance of EU law and practice for the implementation of the GCM; at the normative level, because the GCM draws on four guiding principles—i.e., sovereignty, good governance, human-centricity, and the rule of law—which are also key features of the EU legal system. Departing from these premises, this article reveals the meaning of “comprehensive and integrated” responses to large movements of refugees and migrants in the GCM and EU border policies. It does so in order to provide a critical appraisal of the legal and policy implications of comprehensive approaches in the global and European governance of cross-border human mobility.

States Interests and the Politics of Migration

The establishment of Global Compact for Migration (GCM) was considered as the first important step for the international community to comprehensively address the issue of global migration. However, there are certain objectives within the compact that is considered as vague and unfavourable by several states. Previous studies have explored the advantages and disadvantages of GCM but did not address the specific argumentation that creates disagreements between states. This paper uses the theoretical approach from realist perspective to investigate how certain stipulations within the compact are in contrary to certain actors’ interests, specifically the interests of key state actors in global migration governance. Using qualitative methodology, the analysis began by exploring stances of notable states that opposes the compact. The findings discovered that the GCM failed to recognise the core problem of migration itself which is the management of regular and irregular migrants. The result of the study indicates that states’ rejection towards the Global Compact for Migration are mainly driven by the incompatibility of the compact’s goals and objectives with their national interest, particularly concerning sovereignty and national security.

The Global Compact for Migration: A Case of De-Politicization?

In a political context characterized by democracies with fading partisan identities, political entrepreneurs in the form of radical right parties turned immigration into a powerful subject of issue competition on the basis of a cultural or identity cleavage.1 The literature has illustrated that political parties can respond to this challenge through various strategies (e.g., through ‘accommodation’, ‘adversarial’ and ‘diffusion’ strategies). In this article, we develop an innovative analytical framework to examine strategies of de-politicization in the context of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) in three countries; France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Through this analytical framework, we aim to generate new insights in the dynamics of strategic action through de-politicization, looking at the differentiations between political parties. In the conclusion, we formulate hypotheses for the varying choices in de-politicization strategies, highlighting why some strategies are more prominent in some countries. The application of the analytical framework on rich empirics could serve as a basis for further research on de-politicization strategies in multiple contexts, looking at the factors that explain the variation between political actors.In a political context characterized by democracies with fading partisan identities, political entrepreneurs in the form of radical right parties turned immigration into a powerful subject of issue competition on the basis of a cultural or identity cleavage.1 The literature has illustrated that political parties can respond to this challenge through various strategies (e.g., through ‘accommodation’, ‘adversarial’ and ‘diffusion’ strategies). In this article, we develop an innovative analytical framework to examine strategies of de-politicization in the context of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) in three countries; France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Through this analytical framework, we aim to generate new insights in the dynamics of strategic action through de-politicization, looking at the differentiations between political parties. In the conclusion, we formulate hypotheses for the varying choices in de-politicization strategies, highlighting why some strategies are more prominent in some countries. The application of the analytical framework on rich empirics could serve as a basis for further research on de-politicization strategies in multiple contexts, looking at the factors that explain the variation between political actors.

Xenophobia Denialism and the Global Compact for Migration in South Africa

The United Nations (UN) Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) commits signatories to eliminate all forms of discrimination, and to condemn and counter expressions, acts and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, violence, xenophobia and related intolerance. The growth of xenophobia across the global South has become increasingly apparent. Governance responses to anti-immigrant sentiment and action take three main forms: intensification, mitigation and displacement. In South Africa, policy on international migration to the country focuses more on the perceived negative impacts of migration than any potential development benefits. As a direct result, negativity pervades both public policy and popular discourse about migrants and their impact on the country. Migrants encounter an extremely hostile environment in which their constitutional and legal rights are abrogated, their ability to access basic services and resources is constrained, and their very presence in the country is excoriated by the state and citizenry. Xenophobic attitudes are deeply entrenched, and xenophobic attacks have become common. In this context, this chapter examines the response of the national government and argues that displacement is the dominant governance model. This takes two forms: xenophobia denialism and the scapegoating of migrants. Xenophobia denialism and blaming migrants for their own victimisation act as barriers to South Africa recognising, promoting and arguing for migration as a positive developmental tool and operationalising the anti-xenophobia provisions in the Global Compact.

From Complementarity to Convergence: the UN Global Compact for Migration and the UN Migrant Workers Convention

The UN Global Compact for Migration (GCM) was adopted amidst much fanfare in 2018 and heralded as the first-ever UN global agreement on a common approach to international migration in all its dimensions. This claim is questionable, given the adoption in 1990 of the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICRMW), a core international human rights instrument and the most comprehensive international treaty in the field of migration and human rights. The near-complete silence on the ICRMW during negotiation and adoption of the Global Compact is a cause for concern from the perspective of migrants’ rights protection. The GCM is a soft-law document, a non-legally binding agreement that articulates standards for the treatment of migration and migrants’ rights that fall short of the requirements contained in the ICRMW. In this article I compare the GCM, which may be viewed as an instrument calibrated to the advantage of the Global North, with the ICRMW, which I suggest may be viewed as a de facto instrument of the Global South. After highlighting the large degree of overlap and concordance between the two instruments (B.), I provide an overview of the risks of rights dilution that the GCM poses for migrants’ rights (C.), and then explore the possibilities for ensuring that states implement the Compact in a way that avoids divergence with ICRMW standards (D.). Finally (E.), I identify the key role of the Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW), the body of independent experts charged with supervising application of the ICRMW, in translating the complementarity between the two documents into convergence in implementation. I illustrate how energetic efforts on the part of the CMW on specific fronts may work to effectively ameliorate the risks of rights dilution contained in the GCM and its implementation process.

The Role of Cities in nternational Migration Governance: Migratory Paradiplomacy in the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees

The present article addresses the question of whether cities can be considered new sites for international compliance, given their explicit inclusion in contemporary international soft law instruments such as the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees. It analyses the role of cities as local and international actors in migration issues in terms of how they have been constructed as actors influencing international migration law and discusses the implications of the migratory paradiplomacy they exercise.

The Global Compact for Migration and the Venezuelan Migration Crisis in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. A Comparative Approach

Since 2015 the Venezuelan migration and refugee crisis has become a central issue in the Latin American political agenda. Hyperinflation, high rates of poverty and violence, and the lack of infrastructure have triggered the exodus of millions of Venezuelans to countries throughout the region, most in need of humanitarian assistance. This essay explores how Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, the primary host countries for the Venezuelan migration within the region, have implemented the Global Compact for Migration. Once considered ‘sending’ migrant countries, the three countries of this study have had to come up with strategies to handle the large numbers of migrants coming from Venezuela. By adopting the Compact these countries agreed upon treating migration as a common challenge, and to that extent, to join forces to replace domestic, individual efforts to deal with migration with coordinated actions to reinforce the rights-based approach to migration proposed by the Global Compact. And yet, such a statement does not mean that Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador have uniformly implemented the Compact. The recent tightening of the refugee and immigration procedures in some countries of Latin America, including Peru and Ecuador, illustrates the variety of public discourses regarding the Compact within the region. While further research is desirable to clarify the role of public aid agencies, NGOs, and foundations in implementing the Compact, this article aims to describe the particularities of the national political debate in Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador when adopting the Compact and seeks to assess to what extent the Compact has transformed the domestic migration policies in these countries in light of the Venezuelan migration crisis.

The Legal Status of “Migrants” according to the European Union Legislation

Given that “migration” is a global phenomenon, the international community as a whole had to provide it with a legal basis and to find global solutions, as proven à l’évidence by both the international and the European legislation and the “Global Compact for Migration” approved by the European Council. As is well known, the European Union legislation consists of the texts of its official instruments, such as conventions, treaties, declarations, etc., in which we also find, in fact, the principles stated in the international instruments, which have, indeed, the force of jus cogens for all the states of the world, concerning the universal human rights, including, thus, the rights of the migrants. However, even in terms of their policy regarding migrants, the member states of the European Union have not only applied the principles stated in these international instruments, but they also have enacted a special legislation, and they have taken concrete measures for the implementation of its rules. In the present article I offer the reader the possibility to become acquainted not only with the text of the legislation of the European Union regarding migrants, but also with the policy and the actions taken by the European states for the implementation of the international legislation, and of the European one regarding the social rights of the migrants as workers.

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

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.

Oppositionsverhalten in den Plenardebatten zum Migrationspakt: Der „Neue Dualismus“ auf dem Prüfstand

In the 19th election period, the Alternative for Germany entered the German Bundestag for the first time . Being the largest opposition party, it is conspicuous for its aggressive and provocative behaviour . The smaller and established opposition parties FDP, Left Party, and Greens appear occasionally to distance themselves from their opposition colleague by form­ing an alliance together with the government with the purpose of challenging the far-right populist opposition party . By performing a case study analyzing plenary debates regarding the Global Compact for Migration, utilizing content and frequency analytic methods we study opposition party behaviour with regard to conflict patterns . The findings suggest that the “new dualism” between the governing majority and the opposition is supplemented by the confrontation between established parties and the AfD .