When Migration Policy Isn't about Migration: Considerations for Implementation of the Global Compact for Migration

Abstract

AbstractThe fluid use of the terminology associated with “migration governance” can obscure its intention and implications. Different meanings of core terminology risks allowing troubling policies that are not really about migration, understood widely as border crossing, or even more broadly as human movement, to be legitimized. UN-level coordination with regard to “migration governance” needs to be part of addressing this concern. For example, this article advocates explicitly engaging with this risk through the implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. It considers this issue from the perspectives of a handful of countries, each of which has its own complex relationship to the compact. It argues that in each of these apparently very different contexts, policies identified as being directed at “migration control” can be found to be directed not at controlling migration but at reconfiguring existing and stable state societies along ethnic, racial, linguistic, and other lines. The development of implementation plans for the Global Compact for Migration provides the opportunity to interrogate the purposes of “migration governance” and to find mechanisms to address its hidden uses.