scholarly journals Introduction to Symposium on Framing Global Migration Law – Part II

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 134-135
Author(s):  
Jaya Ramji-Nogales ◽  
Peter J. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Control Approach ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Economic Migration ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Migration Law

Part I of this symposium on framing global migration law introduced broad conceptual parameters of a new field, looking back to its international law roots and forward to a new orientation beyond the strictures of refugee law. Part II looks to situate global migration law along a range of theoretical dimensions. Jacqueline Bhabha establishes the continuities of human movement in a historical context, modern and premodern. Far from representing a radical departure, the current migration “crisis” is consistent with massive migrations over the ages. Tendayi Achiume considers migration through the lens of colonization and decolonization. Out-migration from Europe was a core economic element of the colonization project; Achiume suggests that contemporary migration from former dependencies to metropolitan powers will correct co-dependencies that continue to advantage postcolonial powers. Focusing Achiume's lens on the problem of human trafficking, Janie Chuang complicates the binary depictions of economic migration that underpin contemporary international law. She suggests that global migration law's grounding in a migrant-centered perspective could help state actors to understand the structural causes of modern-day exploitation, enabling a shift from a crime control approach to a human mobility paradigm.

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

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
Frédéric Mégret
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
The Law ◽  
Global Law ◽  
Migration Law

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.

scholarly journals Human Mobility and the Longue Durée: The Prehistory of Global Migration Law

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 136-141
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Bhabha
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
History Of ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
Constant Element

The long history of human migration sets the stage for a probing engagement with current migration law and the challenges of bringing it into alignment with contemporary needs and rights. If very large scale movements of people are a constant element of life on earth, should we reconsider the migration panic that has gripped political leaders and their publics, and should we reassess the responses that are being advanced? Instead of crisis should we be talking of continuum, instead of restrictions on foreigner entry should we be considering support for human ingenuity and opportunity? Despite its scale, should we consider ways to extend to distress-migration the facilitatory infrastructure we routinely apply to business or service related human mobility?

scholarly journals The Contested Boundaries of Emerging International Migration Law in the Post-Pandemic

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 349-353
Author(s):  
Ian M. Kysel ◽  
Chantal Thomas
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
The Status ◽  
Transnational Civil Society ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
Activist Movements ◽  
State Responses ◽  
Migration Law

One measure of how and whether the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes the emerging field of international migration law will be the extent to which transnational civil society and activist movements can counteract the intensification of state border controls that the pandemic has triggered. Before the pandemic, transnational efforts to establish a new normative framework for migration seemed to be accelerating. These efforts included new, if non-binding, global compacts on refugees and migration, and new, if modest, efforts at facilitating global cooperation, alongside innovative approaches to scholarly engagement. Such developments arguably contributed to an emerging framework for protecting migrants under international law. Has the pandemic defeated this potential? State responses to the pandemic have eschewed multilateralism, brought migration to a near standstill, and ignored well-established human rights obligations. Moreover, states are poised to deploy a range of new border management technologies and even more assertively manage migration in the name of “health proofing” borders. Yet at the same time, some progressive state practices have emerged alongside a call from the UN Secretary-General to “reimagine human mobility for the benefit of all.” In this essay, we chart some areas of potentially progressive expansion beyond the status quo, noting not only the substance but also the process by which these norms are emerging.

scholarly journals The European Union and Migration: An Interplay of National, Regional, and International Law

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 509-513
Author(s):  
Iris Goldner Lang
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The Law ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Third Country Nationals

If global migration law “includes all levels of the law,” then the European Union represents the most developed instance of the interplay of national, regional, and international law. Migration law in the European Union involves the interaction of EU Member States’ national laws, EU regional law, and international law. This complex interchange of different migratory legal regimes is the consequence of diverse, and sometimes conflicting, objectives and interests of the Union and its Member States, and the nature of EU law itself. This essay explores the impact of these three levels of the law on the four migratory regulatory categories—EU citizens, “desirable” third-country nationals, asylum seekers, and all other third-country nationals—and the three objectives associated with these categories. The predominance of one legal regime over another varies depending on the regulatory category of migrants and the objectives associated therewith. While describing the existing legal systems, the essay outlines their attributes and shortcomings, the most prominent being: a clear rift between the rights granted to EU citizens and to third-country nationals; EU Member States’ determination to reserve to their respective national territories a high level of national control over labor migration; and significant deficiencies of the EU asylum law which were brought to the surface by the recent refugee influx into the EU.

scholarly journals The Possibilities of Global Migration Law

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Peter J. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Full Range ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
The U.S

When I started teaching international law more than twenty years ago, it was still possible to be an international law generalist. In the U.S. legal academy, the likes of Henkin, Schachter, Franck, and McDougal covered the full range of public international law subjects. (Some even managed to stay on top of private international law, too.) Today, being an international law generalist is impractical; it's simply too difficult to keep current with the breadth of international law. From the scholar's perspective, it's a case of “be careful what you wish for.” A generalist international law orientation used to be possible because there was so little of it, both on the ground and in the scholarship. Those mid-century saplings—the various distinctive fields within international law—have grown to mature oaks, and expert knowledge of their many crevices and branches is beyond the capacity of any single observer. Not only does international law defy individual mastery, but the level of specialization now makes it difficult to talk across these different areas. My colleague in international criminal law might as well be a domestic family law person for purposes of professional points of connection. We both attend the ASIL Annual Meeting, but we no longer really speak the same language.

scholarly journals The Multiple Levels of Governance of International Migration: Understanding Disparities and Disorder

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 153-158
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Awad
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
Migration Law

There is no corpus of law that is global in nature. Rather, “global” migration law is a collection of legal instruments situated at levels ascending from the subnational to the international levels. International law instruments contribute to the global governance of international migration at the international and regional levels. Two issues arise with respect to the effectiveness of these instruments: voluntary state accession and subsequent enforcement, even when states are parties to them. Domestic law regulates issues of international migration at the national and subnational levels. Enforcement is assumed to be more effective here. But this effectiveness varies according to the power of states, their levels of development and their capacities.

scholarly journals The Global Mobility Infrastructure: Reconceptualising the Externalisation of Migration Control

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Spijkerboer
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Global Mobility ◽  
Global North ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Migration Law

Abstract Since the end of the Cold War, migration law and policy of the global North has been characterised by externalisation, privatisation and securitisation. These developments have been conceptualised as denying access to migrants and as politics of non-entrée. This article proposes to broaden the analysis, and to analyse unwanted migration as merely one form of international human mobility by relying on the concept of the global mobility infrastructure. The global mobility infrastructure consists of the physical structures, services and laws that enable some people to move across the globe with high speed, low risk, and at low cost. People who have no access to it travel slowly, with high risk and at high cost. Within the global mobility infrastructure, travellers benefit from advanced forms of international law. For the excluded, international law reflects and embodies their exclusion before, during and after their travel to the global North. Exclusion is based on nationality, race, class and gender. The notion of the global mobility infrastructure allows for questioning the way in which international law reproduces these forms of stratification.

scholarly journals A Changing and Multi-scalar EU Borderscape: The Expansion of Asylum and the Normalisation of the Deportation of EU and EFTA Citizens

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
José A Brandariz ◽  
Cristina Fernández-Bessa
Keyword(s):  
Human Mobility ◽  
Trade Association ◽  
Critical Function ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
European Free Trade Association ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Forced Return ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
The Eu

The sorting of individuals is one critical function performed by migration law. These legal regulations are based on dichotomies, such as separating irregular migrants from regular migrants. However, through the multi-scalar management of human mobility, the conflicting coexistence of national and supranational interests decentres these legal binaries. Therefore, migration law devices sort newcomers in a more complex way, giving shape to multilayered and unstable hierarchies of otherness. Using Spain as a case study on migration control changes, this paper addresses the role that migration law enforcement institutions play in cementing and eroding these legal categories. First, it analyses the consequences of the so-called ‘migration crisis’ in enlarging a European asylum system that, until recently, seemingly rests on few countries. Second, it examines the increasing normalisation of the forced return of European Union (EU) (and European Free Trade Association [EFTA]) nationals, which undermine a critical prerogative of the EU citizenship status.

scholarly journals Mapping Global Migration Law, or the Two Batavias

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 504-508
Author(s):  
Chantal Thomas
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Control Rights ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
General Field ◽  
The Times ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

This symposium has marshaled numerous insights regarding the emergence of a general field of inquiry within international law on the movement of people. To move into this conceptual terrain has required a certain amount of defiance of the conventional wisdom that questions of migration are within the purview of the sovereign state, and a matter of sovereign territorial prerogative. Yet this conventional wisdom manifestly no longer describes the times. There are now a host of limitations under positive international law on the prerogative of states to control rights of noncitizens to entry, residence, and work within their territories; and limitations on states’ rights to exclude or expel noncitizens therefrom.

scholarly journals Global Migration Law and Regional Free Movement: Compliance and Adjudication – The Case of South America

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 159-164
Author(s):  
Diego Acosta
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Central America ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Regional Agreements ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
Huge Variation ◽  
Regional Processes

The field of global migration law looks beyond international law to incorporate all levels of the law, including the regional. This essay explores the regional regulation of mobility, which has indeed become a central subject of discussion and academic analysis. The expansion of human rights law coupled with the explosion of regional processes of integration are the two most important phenomena that have limited the state's capacity to restrict the entry of foreigners and their rights. It should come as no surprise that regional agreements facilitating mobility have proliferated and now involve around 120 countries, either at a bilateral or multilateral level. For one thing, most global migration is regional, whether in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Southern and Central America. In addition, regional instruments can be agreed on more rapidly and, in principle, introduce higher standards of protection and rights due to the more limited number of actors involved in the negotiations. There is, of course, huge variation across regions as to the degree of development of the various agreements, the categories of individuals entitled to mobility and equal treatment and their effective application and enforcement mechanism devices.

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