Prospects for Global Migration Governance

While the prospects for a comprehensive system of global migration governance are remote, this chapter argues that this may be beside the point. Instead, efforts to build capacity, shared understanding of challenges, and efforts to persuade states of the benefits of cooperation can exist without formalized overarching structures. The chapter documents efforts that have been made, identifying the key role played by key organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the International Labour Organization (ILO). The chapter also demonstrates how the ‘global’ has become increasingly contested in the politics of some key destination states, which shows how prospects for global migration governance are not a merely technical question but raise important political questions. The chapter also shows the centrality of regions in mediating the relationship between the global and the national levels.

North America

While there is no formalized regional migration governance in North America and little prospect of it developing, there are powerful regionalized effects linked to US hegemony and the interest of US capital. Understandings and representations of migration in the US governance system have had powerful regional effects and shaped responses in both Canada and Mexico. An increased focus on the deterrence that existed prior to the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001 has shaped regionalized responses. The election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 brought nativist and racist rhetoric to US immigration policy and to relations with its neighbours, but ramped up provisions that, unwilling as he was to admit it, were already well established.

Conclusions

This chapter summarizes the main arguments of the book. It specifies the value of migration governance repertoires as a way to look inside the ‘black box’ of migration governance and to know more about how know-how and expectations about role held by key actors play a powerful role in the outputs and outcomes that emerge from these systems. It is shown that regions play a key role in mediating the relationship between the global and national level. More than this it, is argued that regions play an important role in shaping the ways in which global norms and standards are understood and interpreted. This means that it is not simply a question of adaptation to global standards but, in contrast, how global norms and standards are rendered meaningful at regional and national levels. The chapter also shows how understandings of what is ‘normal’ about migration—of its causes and effects—are the backdrop against which intermittent crises are interpreted.

De jure and de facto Openness in South America

Resurgent regionalism since the 2000s in South America brought with it a notably progressive approach to migration at both national and regional level. The emergence and effects of this approach are assessed and also related to wider concerns about governability insofar as they affect responses to migration, but also how they relate more broadly to the operation and effects of political systems in South America. Particular attention is paid to the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) and its development of a Residence Agreement that provides rights and protections for citizens of member states and more generally of a regional response that consciously opposed itself to US regional hegemony and to the EU as a template for regional migration governance.

Repertoires of Migration Governance

This chapter specifies the idea of migration governance repertoires, which are then used to organize the analysis of migration governance in Europe, North America, South America, and Southeast Asia and to explore prospects for global migration governance. Repertoires are shown to have narrative, social, symbolic, and affective components and also to be ongoing in that they don’t have a clear beginning and end. The key features of repertoires are assessed through five intuitively expressed questions that actors face in migration governance systems: ‘How can we figure out what’s going on out there?’; ‘Why do something when we don’t know what effect it will have?’; ‘How can we choose our priorities?’; ‘Who are all these people at this meeting?’; and ‘Does that make sense to us?’ These are shown to require interpretations of facts and evidence but also to necessarily elide with beliefs and values in ways that shape the operation and effects of migration governance systems.

The Normality of Crisis in the European Union

The European Union’s responses to migration have been powerfully influenced by understandings and representations of the potential for large-scale and potentially uncontrollable migration flows. These have had important effects on repertoires of migration governance and on what actors know how to do, as well as on their social expectations about role. A key conclusion is that while migration crises catch attention, it the understandings and representations of the normality of migration that have shaped European and EU migration governance. This normality is closely linked to concern about uncontrollable flows that have shaped EU cooperation since the end of the Cold War.

Governing Migration beyond the State

This chapter introduces key themes and issues that will be explored in the book’s analysis of regional migration governance in Europe, North America, South America, and Southeast Asia. It specifies how representations of the causes and effects of migration—of what’s going on ‘out there’ —held by key actors in migration governance systems have shaping effects on responses to migration, as understood and represented. These processes of sense-making are embedded in what are called repertoires of migration governance that have narrative, social, symbolic, and affective components and are also ongoing in that they don’t have a clear beginning and end. By opening the black box of governance it is possible to understand more about how know-how and social expectations about role play a significant part in shaping the outputs or outcomes of migration governance systems.

Southeast Asia

Migration governance in Southeast Asia is shown to be strongly influenced by representations of its temporariness, which shape responses to labour migration and to forced displacement. The idea that migrant workers are temporary and that forcibly displaced people require temporary protection in the region and resettlement outside it has become embedded within repertoires of migration governance in Southeast Asia that shape what governing actors know how to do and also what they think they should be doing. The chapter focuses on ASEAN as a key regional grouping but one that has significant constraints on its ability to act on migration issues and on the Bali Process, which is a more informal regional consultation process and brings Australian influence into the Southeast Asian region.