Migration Governance in South America: The Bottom-Up Diffusion of the Residence Agreement of Mercosur

Abstract

This article offers a complementary explanation to the diffusion theory that focuses on the process of governance emergence from a top-down perspective. This complementary explanation analyzes the bottom-up processes of diffusion and tested them by studying the policy formulation process in the Mercosur Residence Agreement (RA) signed in 2002. Based on interviews with key actors, documents, and academic literature, this article concludes that the RA was mainly the result of Brazilian and Argentinian negotiations. Brazil needed to boost regional cooperation after the Mercosur crisis, and considered that a joint migration amnesty could have a positive impact on the trading bloc’s image. However, the Argentinian experience in migration issues allowed for a more coherent policy on the matter. Therefore, I maintain that the mode of interaction in the Residence Agreement negotiations was a bottom up diffusion process that allowed the regionalization of domestic policies.

A prelude to policy transfer research

“…Some of these are abstract, such as ideas, ideologies, principles, discourses, paradigms and so on, while others are more concrete, such as policy models and designs, laws and constitutions, administrative arrangements, forms of government, policy instruments, institutions, etc. To mention just a few examples, scholars have dedicated their research to understand transfer, diffusion, and circulation of the following objects: democratic institutions and participatory democracy (Huntington, 1993;Porto de Oliveira, 2017;Simmons et al, 2010), regulatory agencies (Levi-Faur and Jordana, 2005), pensions (Brooks, 2005), migration policies (Braz, 2018;Channac, 2006;Infantino, 2019), social policies (Kuhlmann et al, 2020;Weyland, 2006), conditional cash transfers (Howlett et al, 2018;Leisering, 2019; Morais de Sá e Silva, 2017; Osorio Gonnet, 2019), transport policies (Ardila, 2020;Mejía-Dugand et al, 2013;Montero, 2017;Wood, 2015b), disaster reduction (Soremi, 2019), rule of law (Dezalay and Garth, 2002), evidence-based health agencies (Hassenteufel et al, 2017), microfinance (Oikawa Cordeiro, 2019), harm reduction (Baker et al, 2020), and administrative capacities (Hadjiisky, 2017), amongst other "objects". An important feature of policy transfer dynamics is that, as will be discussed later, public policies are not transplanted, and don't necessarily displace, as a monolithic block, but instead different policy instruments and components, coming from different origins, are combined and translated to meet the demands in the context and expectations of transfer agents.…”

“…Frameworks, issues, and concepts were developed analyzing empirical objects such as policies moving between Northern countries, such as the United States and Britain Hulme, 2006), among European Union states (Bulmer et al, 2007;Hadjiisky, 2017;Halpern, 2014;Padgett, 2003;Peters, 1997;Radaelli, 2000;Saurugger and Surel, 2006), and so on, or from these countries or international organizations to the Global South (Badie, 1992;Bissessar, 2002). However, in the past years other scholars -in particular from Latin America -started to join the discussion bringing fresh insights (Ardila, 2020;Braz, 2018; Dussauge-Laguna, 2013; Milhorance, 2018; Morais de Sá e Silva, 2017; Osorio Gonnet, 2019; Pacheco-Vega, 2015; Porto de Oliveira, 2017). This was due to a new empirical configuration in global public policymaking, where different policy innovations produced in the South, both local and national, started to gain international recognition and circulation worldwide.…”

A Study of Argentina's Experience in Participating in Regional Migration Governance in South America —from the Perspective of Interaction between Domestic and Foreign Affairs

“…There had been intense negotiations on immigration policy between Congress, the executive branch responsible for immigration issues, and civil society. [21] As a result, discussions on migration policy within Argentina and a summary of previous experiences and lessons learned on migration governance gave birth to the proposal that came to be known as the Mercosur Residency Agreement, which was presented at the meeting of the Specialized Migration Working Group in October.…”

Data and cooperation required for Venezuela’s refugee crisis during COVID-19

“…The pandemic found regionalism at a time of decline. In the past, the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) was able to adopt rules on residency that made it possible to regularize the situation of tens of thousands of migrants in the region [ 40 ]. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was considered a model in regional health diplomacy [ 41 ].…”