Regional migration governance – building block of global initiatives?

Abstract

Regional institutions addressing mobility, asylum, migrant rights or migration control have proliferated all over the world and occupy an important space in recent UN initiatives to boost global cooperation on migration and refugees. Unlike Europe, where these different aspects of migration policy have come under the ambit of one institution, the European Union, regional initiatives in other parts of the world tend to emerge in different fora, with overlapping but incongruent memberships. Introducing a taxonomy of regional migration institutions, this article assesses regionalism's contribution to multilevel migration governance in two dimensions: the vertical interplay between regional and multilateral institutions on the one hand and the horizontal relationship between regional institutions on the other hand. The article concludes that regional (economic) integration frameworks like ASEAN, ECOWAS or MERCOSUR may prove fruitful anchors for more substantial regional migration governance.

Introduction to Special issue: ‘migration governance in an era of large movements: a multi-level approach’

“…This special issue uses the lens of MLG to examine power shifts in external dimensions of migration law and policy-making triggered by large flows. We address three aspects of this emerging research field: First, it examines at which levels of governance third countries and regional integration units cooperate with the EU, including dynamics between the EU and the ECOWAS, and the EU and Mercado Común del Sur (Mercosur) (Bisong 2019;Lavenex 2019). Second, it studies how the dynamics among intra-EU levels change when the EU cooperates with third countries in times of crisis (Fakhoury 2019;Hanke, Wieruszewski, and Panizzon 2019).…”

Common market, normative power or super-state? Conflicting political identities in EU asylum and immigration policy

“…Usually, these demands have been met via national immigration laws and bilateral labour treaties. Some regional integration projects such as Europe's Single Market, the Mercosur in South America or African Regional Economic Communities have enshrined multilateral commitments to open up for the mobility of workers and other citizens, thus effectively entailing Member States' voluntary renouncement of sovereign control over intra-regional migration (Lavenex 2018b). With western liberal states' transformation towards knowledge-based service economies, mobile labour has become a factor of economic competitiveness in the quest for talent and skills.…”

Opening‐up labor mobility? Rising powers' rulemaking in trade agreements

“…Their regulatory implications, however, are significant. First, access to state territory and the right to work are key prerogatives of the state, and apart from regional free movement regimes and the GATS, no international treaty concedes such rights to migrants (Trachtman 2009;Lahav & Lavenex 2012;Lavenex 2018). Second, the traditional instruments for labor mobility cooperationbilateral Memoranda of Understandingare legally nonbinding.…”