Migration Governance

Gasthoofdredacteur Elaine Lebon-McGregor bepleit innovatief, multilevel perspectief

The articles in this special dossier introduce the reader to some key issues of relevance to migration governance from a multilevel perspective and present a diverse picture of what migration governance means to a range of academics and practitioners. There are inevitably gaps, and voices are missing, however the articles in this dossier offer a first glimpse into the complex reality of migration governance.

In this introductory article we introduce some key concepts that will be useful to the reader as they navigate the articles in the series. 

Migration governance is at all times, and in all places, a necessarily organisational process. What this means is that governance ‘actors’, meaning people working for organisations of varying types  – such as national governments, international organisations and NGOs – and with starkly varying degrees of power, must address two basic and linked questions that confront all organisations: what is going on ‘out there’ and what should we do next? The result is that migration governance is necessarily based on judgements, perceptions, and understandings of international migration in its various forms, but these develop in the shadow of considerable uncertainty about the causes and effects of migration. In other words, how we think about the causes of migration affects how we design policies to influence migration, and these understandings vary considerably across the world.

In the past, the government treated undocumented migrants in the Netherlands with considerable leniency. Since the early 90s however, preventing irregular migration has been a priority. Consistent with the country’s general approach, the governance of undocumented migrants can be characterised as multi-level, with national and local governments playing divergent roles, and civil society and migrant-led organisations playing an important role in the arm’s length provision of services. This multi-level approach has been more apparent in the Dutch response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While upholding exclusionary policies, the government has instituted ad hoc protection measures and introduced inclusive practices carried out for the most part by organisations, including those initiated by migrants. This illustrates that some welfare provision does not necessarily contradict a restrictive migration policy. However, the temporariness and unpredictability of inclusive practices underscore the tension between the visible ‘sunshine’ and the hidden ‘shadow’ politics in the multi-level governance of undocumented migrants in the Netherlands. This calls attention to the vital importance of policy coherence and continuity as well as a more adaptive and reflexive governance strategy. 

For decades, migration governance was relegated to the backwaters of the UN system with informal committees and working groups rarely grabbing the public’s attention. However, the 2015 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, followed by the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) moved migration governance to center stage.be what the Global Compacts are and how they fit with wider migration governance. This is based on my research and fieldwork in my recent book, UN Flobal Compacts: Governing Migration and Refugees. While migration governance remains largely fractured, I show how states negotiated the Global Compacts as non-binding frameworks that bundle and reaffirm rights, while also establishing a path for future global migration governance.

Recent migratory crises are shedding light on the limits of the global systems of migration governance. These new challenges call for new solutions and the creation of new tools for diagnosis. The “toolbox” currently available appears indeed inadequate both to capture the complexity of the actual governance system and to face the reality of the present crises of human mobility. This paper gives an overview of some its gaps and highlights some of the crucial aspects that need to be covered. New tools for evaluating migration governance need to account for all the actors, layers, and stages of migration governance and to be grounded on the principle of migrant protection.

There is a widespread consensus that the current governance of migration is unsatisfactory, but no consensus on the ways in which it should be improved. Policy debates polarise around simple binary oppositions that fail to address the complexity of the political dilemmas. There are at least five key ways in which to think about and govern migration, which evolve around different priorities: (1) state sovereignty, (2) security and interstate cooperation to control borders, (3) human rights and migrants’ vulnerability to abuses, (4) economistic management of migration for growth and development, and (5) free movement. Migration governance draws upon all five principles, but future migration governance will need to re-equilibrate the balance between them to achieve lasting and successful political strategies.

This article describes the ascension of cities as key actors in global cooperation, and their related impact in shaping the global governance of migration. Over the last decade, cities have begun to mobilize strategically through greater trans-networking efforts in order to secure their representation in global decision-making circles; to inform policies such that these better reflect local realities; and to advocate for direct access to resources to implement their goals.  One important outcome of these efforts is mayors’ successful advocacy in 2018 for a clause on ‘non-discriminatory access’ to public health services within the UN Global Compact for Migration (GCM).  Mayors’ insistence on non-discriminatory treatment of all city residents was right and prescient in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and is further evidence of the critical need to elevate local leadership within national and global policy-making and governance.