Global Migration Governance Research Articles

Let's Argue about Migration: advancing a right(s) discourse via communicative opportunities

The emerging global governance of migration is dominated by two discourses which shape policy approaches: 1) migration management and 2) the migration–development nexus. With large numbers of labour migrants being marginalised, migrant rights organisations have formed global alliances to argue for the centrality of a third discourse, the rights-based approach to migration. The question is how to inject this into the global debate which has sidelined migrant rights issues. Despite having hardly any bargaining power and restricted space for direct access vis-à-vis global governing institutions, migrant rights organisations are employing a number of strategies to overcome this marginalisation. We analyse these efforts by drawing on social movement studies and International Relations research on communicative action. Empirically this article draws on observations made during two major global fora: the negotiations in connection with the new Convention on ‘Decent Work for Domestic Workers’ at the International Labour Conference (ilc) and civil society participation in the Global Forum on Migration and Development (gfmd).

Management Versus Rights: Women's Migration and Global Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean

The global governance of labor migration reflects two major trends: one supports neoliberal migration management priorities and another addresses human rights, with the latter subordinated to the former. This subordination of human rights to other, market-related, priorities parallels global governance priorities in general. While some international organizations address the need for protection of migrant rights, their specific on-the-ground programs do not match the rhetoric. This study demonstrates this disconnection on the basis of an analysis of interviews with representatives of global governance institutions and international nongovernmental organizations conducted between 2007 and 2010 in the Latin American and Caribbean region and at the headquarters of relevant international organizations in Geneva. Furthermore, the study argues that because the discourse on migrant women's rights and their labor exploitation is framed predominantly in the context of trafficking, little headway is made in advancing migrant women's labor and social rights.

Book Review: Global Migration Governance

A review of the book Global Migration Governance, edited by Alexander Betts is presented.

Environmental Migration in Asia and the Pacific: Could We Hang Out Sometime?

Several proposals for global legal governance of environmental migration have recently been published, almost exclusively by Western scholars. The present article shows the distance – both the geographical distance and the intellectual isolation – between descriptive works on environmental migration as a phenomenon and the normative studies on necessary developments of law and governance. It suggests that this distance resulted in a postcolonial approach of environmental migration, which could impede the protection of environmental migrants. While recalling that governance of environmental migration is generally most likely to succeed in the regional arena, this article argues that Asia-Pacific regions should determine the content of regional legal approaches of environmental migration. Participating in a multi-civilizational discussion is a unique opportunity for rising regions of Asia and the Pacific to affirm their growing diplomatic role and to demonstrate their capacity to be instrumental in the development of liberal forms of transnational governance.

Bringing Human Rights into the Migration and Development Debate

International migration is a key aspect of global integration, yet migration is characterised by a global governance deficit: unlike such areas as finance and trade, there is a lack of international institutions to set standards and ensure conformity with international legal norms. State migration policies often fail or have unintended consequences, while for migrants the result may be high levels of risk and exploitation. The US has over 11 million irregular residents, and systematic use of irregular migrant labour can be found throughout the world. In recent years, however, there have been attempts to move towards global governance mechanisms in the migration field. At the same time, migrant associations have grown and linked up with international human rights organisations. The article examines these trends, paying special attention to the Global Forum on Migration and Development – an intergovernmental consultation process that has met annually since 2007 – and the efforts of migrant associations and other civil society organisations to bring human rights into the debate. A final section discusses the initiative of a group of mainly Latin American academics to establish a new conceptual framework and set of strategic indicators to assess the links between migration, development and human rights. Policy Implications • Labour-importing countries can no longer pursue migration policies that ignore the interests, needs and rights of migrants and their communities of origin. • It is important for government and international agencies to work together with civil society organisations and migrant associations to safeguard migrant rights and to improve outcomes for all concerned. • Government policies on ‘migration management’ generally differentiate migrants into the highly skilled who are welcomed and offered legal entry and secure residency, and the low skilled who are treated as temporary migrants with limited rights or – even worse – as irregulars who are subject to criminalisation and high levels of risk and exploitation. Policies of this kind often fail to achieve their objectives or have unintended consequences. • Migration only benefits development if it is seen as part of a broader change process, which includes combating corruption, improving transport and communications infrastructure, upgrading education and health systems and improving rights and political participation. In other words, broadly based sustainable development comes first. • Progress towards a more sustainable migration order that recognises the rights and needs of all involved must be based on the questioning of dominant assumptions and the development of new sets of indicators and new sources of data. • Bringing human and worker rights into the migration and development debate is crucial for the establishment of fair and sustainable forms of global migration governance.

Global governance, economic migration and the difficulties of social activism

There has been a gradual shift towards greater global governance of labour migration, a development paralleled by the mushrooming of migrant and civil society associations concerned to uphold a rights-based approach to migration. Yet the emergent global governance structures offer few opportunities for advocacy by migrant and civil society organizations. This article explores the reasons why social activism by or on behalf of economic migrants remains difficult. The article focuses in particular on the obstacles in the way of access to global institutions and to migrant voice, the complexity and ambiguity of the increasingly multi-sited governance structure and the difficulties of placing rights at its centre, all of which mean that formal mechanisms of global governance with regard to migration remain exclusionary and migrant activism part of the critical resistance to contemporary globalization rather than an insider element of governance.

The Governance of International Migration: Mechanisms, Processes, and Institutions

This article explains how the global governance of international migration has evolved as a policy issue on the international agenda over the past decade while noting that there is still no consensus on whether global governance is really required, what type of global governance would be appropriate, and how it should develop. The article reviews a series of policy options that have been proposed to fill the governance gap in international migration; namely, to create a new agency, to designate a lead agency, to bring the International Organization for Migration into the UN system, a coordination model, a leadership model, a World Trade Organization model, and an evolutionary model.

Exploring Links between Education, Migration and Remittances: The Philippine Case

For developing countries, remittances have long since surpassed official development aid as a source of external finance. Many countries with large migrant stocks receive more in remittances than in foreign direct investment. Here, we explore interrelationships between education, migration and remittances in the Philippines. Much literature has been devoted to debating brain drain versus gain as well as the costs and benefits of workers’ remittances. Here, we provide preliminary thoughts on how the recent global financial crisis informs these dynamics during changeable global conditions and its implications for other developing countries. As in other migrant-sending countries, remittances to the Philippines – the world’s fourth largest recipient of such inflows – were expected to fall substantially in 2009. Given difficult economic conditions in several destination countries, the knock-on effects of lost employment and stagnant wages were generally believed to cast ominous portents. Both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted declines, as did financial services providers Citigroup, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC. The latter even predicted a 20 per cent decline in remittance inflows amid the crisis even though they have grown every year since 2001. Development administrators, too, have expressed wariness about falling remittances due to the crisis (Alexander, 2010). Remarkably, in not a single month did nominal recorded remittances to the Philippines fall on a year-on-year basis from 2008 to 2009, eventually totalling $17.3 billion (BSP, 2010). We believe that this is not a serendipitous occurrence but an outcome born of distinct policy choices. Although administrations come and go, migrant workers remain an indispensable constituency given their importance in helping to insulate the country from balance of payments problems. Moreover, the Philippine example holds insights for other labour-exporting countries. In this commentary, we will discuss preferences from the panoply of policy options that have helped create this result. Surpassing all others is the challenge to equip migrants with relevant skills that the global marketplace requires and that, in turn, lend them much-needed protection. Second is that of broadening geographic possibilities for migrants set against a global backdrop of widespread scepticism of and even outright disdain for open borders. Taken together, measures to address these challenges suggest that migrant-sending states will have a significant role to play as the global governance of migration remains a patchwork quilt at best.

Labour migration in Southeast Asia: migration policies, labour exploitation and regulation

Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are Southeast Asia's economic development success stories and have been shifting towards an intra-regional bias on trade and migration matters. All three countries are heavily dependent on foreign workers and have government-mediated migration policies for their continued economic growth and prosperity. Managing migration is a major problem facing these countries, and the guest worker programme is increasingly seen as the optimal solution to fill labour market gaps. Migration policies often provide incentives for skilled workers, boost circular migration flows among low-skilled guest workers and include stringent border-control regimes to exclude unauthorised migration. The guest worker programme is also reliant on networks and intermediaries, and brokerage fees contribute to less-skilled migrant workers' marginalisation and exploitation. Changes in global migration governance, the inclusion of migrant labour exploitation under the banner of trafficking and the threat of economic sanctions are increasingly resulting in interstate cooperation and more humane border regimes.

Environmental Migration Governance

Environmental migration governance, like global migration governance more broadly, suffers from significant fragmentation both vertically - with actors at the international, regional and local levels - and horizontally - with the phenomenon addressed in part or, more rarely, as a whole under the auspices of a range of other ‘policy categories’ and associated institutions. Interests in environmentally-driven population movement can be identified across the fields of migration, environment, development, human rights, disaster management and humanitarian relief. Yet despite (or because of) the plethora of existing as well as potential governance mechanisms, processes and institutions, there is presently no coherent multilateral governance framework for environmental migration. The fact that the same is true of global migration generally provides the context for the present chapter’s examination of environmental migration governance. The particular features and challenges that it raises must ultimately inform the broader question of whether, and how, a unified global governance system for migration could and should be developed, and whether, and how, the regulation of environmental migration might fit into such a vision. Environmental migration is not a new phenomenon. Natural and human-induced environmental disasters have displaced people in the past and continue to do so. Nevertheless, the environmental events and processes accompanying global climate change threaten to dramatically increase human movement both within and across State borders. As far as actual numbers are concerned, there is no doubt that ‘current predictions are fraught with numerous methodological problems and caveats’. Yet most estimates suggest that between 200 and 250 million people will be displaced by environmental causes before 2050. The environmental impacts of climate change have been signalled as the key driver of this anticipated surge in migration. Evidently migration on this unprecedented scale demands a multilateral institutional response. Yet, environmental migration governance represents a significant challenge, not least because the content and parameters of the concept continue to be debated. There is at present no internationally agreed definition of what it means to be an environmental ‘migrant’, ‘refugee’ or ‘displaced person’, and, consequently, no agreed label for those affected. Questions of definition have clear governance implications, informing the appropriate location of environmental migration both procedurally - as an international, regional or local, developed and/or developing country concern/responsibility - and thematically - for example, within the existing refugee protection framework or under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The viability and value of institutionalizing international cooperation and collaboration on international migration matters generally, and environmental migration particularly, depends upon how that phenomenon can and should be formulated as a discrete concept in law and policy. Such normative conclusions must be grounded in a thorough examination and assessment of the existing institutions and political processes that impact upon environmental migration and States’ responses to them.

Why Europe Has to Offer a Better Deal Towards its Muslim Communities: A Quantitative Analysis of Open International Data

Why Europe Has to Offer a Better Deal Towards its Muslim Communities: A Quantitative Analysis of Open International Data