Data Sets on International Migration

International migration figures prominently on the agenda of the United Nations. Solid migration data are crucial for supporting this global debate. This article describes the international migration data sets produced by the Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations. The Population Division’s Migration Section produces migrant stock estimates for the world’s countries by sex and, more recently, by age. The Section also produces a database containing annual data on inflows, outflows, and net flows of international migrants by country of origin for major destination countries. The Section maintains the Global Migration Database, containing the world’s most complete set of empirical statistics on the international migrant stock by country of birth, citizenship, sex, and age for more than 200 countries and territories for recent decades. The data and associated publications are available from the Migration Section’s Web site at http://www.unmigration.org .     

Democratising Migration from the Bottom Up: The Rise of the Global Migrant Rights Movement

Abstract

This paper discusses the link between international migration and democratisation from an actor-oriented perspective on the basis of the mobilising efforts by key civil society actors engaged in the promotion of the rights of migrant workers through developing strategies towards movement building and by capitalising on political opportunities that have appeared on the global level. Being pitched at the global level and at organising patterns via the network form, the analytical framework developed takes as its starting point global justice perspectives and then builds upon insights from social movement and constructivist International Relations scholarship. It is argued that what is emerging are (1) movement practices in migrant rights networks which are putting forward increasingly coherent claims that transcend the conventional thinking about global governance and human rights (rights-assuming advocacy); and (2) that such practices are effectively transgressing interstate political arenas (participatory, rights-producing politics). It is on the basis of the cooperation between the 2 main protagonists, trade unions and migrant rights associations, that strategic positioning of migrant rights issues within the global policy debate is taking place, with the aim of promoting a rights-based approach (RBA) to migration and its governance. The combination of rights-producing politics and rights-assuming advocacy is expressed in the RBA to migration which involves the reframing of migrants rights as well as attempts to democratise migration governance in participatory terms.     

Ethics,national sovereignty and the control of immigration

"This paper examines the debate as to whether migration is a basic human right or if the claims of outsiders are superseded by the principle of national sovereignty--the moral obligation of states to do the best for their own citizens. In evaluating migration and refugees it focuses on issues of open borders, migration selectivity, the capacity of sovereign states to control entry, the claims of refugees, the relationship between sovereignty and justifiable intervention, and the role of public opinion and morals throughout migration policies."     

The passing of the Rex

This paper takes as its point of departure the ethical problematization of debating both sides – having students argue both affirmative and negative on a debate resolution – in order to highlight the role of communication as a cultural technology of liberalism. It argues that debating both sides contributed to the cultural governance of cold war liberalism by separating speech from conviction to cultivate the value of debate as a method of democratic decision-making. The valorization of free and full expression as a pre-requisite for ‘decision by debate’ prepared the ground for dis-articulating debate from cold war liberalism and re-articulating it as a game of freedom that contributes to the moral education of liberal citizens. In so doing, debate becomes a global technology of liberalism creating exceptional subjects by circulating the communicative norms of deliberative democracy.     

A history of Chinese global Internet governance and its relations with ITU and ICANN

The Chinese contribution to global Internet governance debate has been studied mainly by focusing on the governmental perspective. This study was aimed to provide a broader view by analyzing the participation of Chinese academics and civil society in two of the most important Internet governance international organizations: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Based on historical material and in-depth interviews conducted in Geneva and Beijing, the findings show the evolution of Chinese Internet governance at the global level and suggest the following: first, the Chinese agents in the global debate on Internet governance support a multi-stakeholder perspective; second, although seldom engaged in the decision-making process, the Chinese agents involved in the global governance identify ITU as the more credible international organization in coordinating global governance; third, the Chinese agents have an ambivalent approach to Chinese participation both in ITU and ICANN. Finally, the findings of the study reported in this article contest the understanding that Chinese Internet governance is isolationist in nature.     

Liberalism(s) and the Critical Securitization of Development Debate

The securitization of development theme has developed substantially since the late 1990s within the critical global governance literature. To varying degrees, contributors to this debate argue that a liberal global governance complex links the discourses of security and development in what is described as the ‘security–development nexus’, such that the South is conceived as an international security threat. Whilst the security–development nexus itself has been thoroughly explored, the use of the central concept of liberalism has not. This paper addresses this issue through demarcating and critiquing the three readings of liberalism relevant to the securitization of development debate. Identifying and elucidating the three distinct strands of liberalism enable this paper to identify several weaknesses within the debate and propose a number of amendments. This includes proposing that the liberal discourse of global governance reflects complexity rather than consensus and that the centrality of ‘liberalism’ is at the expense of a robust investigation into how the structural power of global capitalism underpins the security–development nexus.     

Migration,Precarization and the Democratic Deficit in Global Governance

This article attempts to provide a critical understanding of the dual signification of “precarity”. It explores what “precarity” as a concept may potentially offer to studies of the changing contemporary political economy of migration. It discusses shifting trends in global migration and point to tendencies for a possible convergence between “South” and “North”, “East” and “West”. Based on a review of current advances in research, it discusses, with reference to the classical work of Karl Polanyi, the potential for a contemporary “countermovement” which would challenge the precarity of migrants. Bringing forward the issue of the “space for civil society” the article addresses a still lingering democratic deficit in the global governance of migration.

Policy Implications

The article is relevant to policymakers, trade unions and civil society organizations. It contributes to the understanding of policy making processes in emerging multilevel global governance and focuses on issues of precarization, migration, and the implementation and accountability of human, migrant and labour rights.     

Looking Back and Moving Forward: The Research Agenda on the Global Governance of Mixed Migration

There is no international regime to comprehensively govern transnational migration in all of its facets. But scholars and policymakers acknowledge and study the existence of the global governance of migration. Though most have focused on disaggregating the global governance of migration into its separate regimes (refugees, labour, travel, etc.), I argue here that much of this architecture addresses the phenomenon of mixed migration. I define the global governance of mixed migration as involving a range of legal regimes impinging on actors simultaneously; shared understandings about the nature of mixed migration, including motivations and drivers; and the existence of different bilateral, regional and global arrangements for addressing the phenomenon. I critically review the interdisciplinary research agenda on the global governance of mixed migration, covering its emergence over the last twenty years, its broad empirical and conceptual dimensions, the major debates and promising directions for future research.     

Tokens or Stakeholders in Global Migration Governance? The Role of Affected Communities and Civil Society in the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees

Focussing on the inclusion of those primarily affected as stakeholders (refugees and other migrants), this article addresses a key ambition of the compacts themselves. We employ an ‘inside‐outside’ perspective and firstly ask: which groups participated in the consultative processes, what agenda did they set ‘inside’ the meetings, what alliances did they establish and how did they influence the outcomes? Secondly, we investigate what kind of advocacy took place ‘outside’ of these formalized spaces and what impact it had? By this, we not only contribute to an evaluation of the processes themselves, but also advance current academic debates on strategies, spaces and political opportunity structures for civil society and particularly migrant involvement in global migration governance from below and the larger debate on democratizing global institutions.     

The significance of meaning. Why IPBES needs the social sciences and humanities

The term “biodiversity” is often used to describe phenomena of nature, which can be studied without a reference to the socially constructed, evaluative, or indeed normative contexts. In our paper, we challenge this conception by focusing particularly on methodological aspects of biodiversity research. We thereby engage with the idea of interdisciplinary biodiversity research as a scientific approach directed at the recognition and management of contemporary society in its ecological embedding. By doing this, we explore how research on and assessments of biodiversity can be enhanced if meaning, aspiration, desires, and related aspects of agency are methodically taken into account. In six sections, we substantiate our claim that the discourse on biodiversity (including the IPBES (Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) debate) is incomplete without contributions from the social sciences and humanities. In the introduction, a brief overview of biodiversity’s conceptual history is provided showing that “biodiversity” is a lexical invention intended to create a strong political momentum. However, that does not impede its usability as a research concept. Section 2 examines the origins of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) by way of sociological discourse analysis. Subsequently, it proposes a matrix as a means to structure the ambiguities and tensions inherent in the CBD. The matrix reemphasizes our main thesis regarding the need to bring social and ethical expertise to the biodiversity discourse. In Section 3, we offer a brief sketch of the different methods of the natural and social sciences as well as ethics. This lays the groundwork for our Section 4, which explains and illustrates what social sciences and ethics can contribute to biodiversity research. Section 5 turns from research to politics and argues that biodiversity governance necessitates deliberative discourses in which participation of lay people plays an important role. Section 6 provides our conclusions.     

Power,capital, and immigration detention rights: making networked markets in global detention governance at UNHCR

With the expanded use of immigration detention and migration management practices worldwide, detention has emerged as a key issue for United Nations and international human rights institutions. A growing international rights movement seeks to make the practice fairer and more humane, leading to the dominance of a mainstream detention rights agenda and counter‐hegemonic system of governance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Geneva and elsewhere, this article examines the capital, knowledge, and technological expertise that went into the construction of UNHCR's Global Detention Strategy. I highlight the rational calculation undergirding this global detention rights agenda, including the transnational policy networks of NGOs, INGOs, and academics that facilitate the movement's moral authority and capitalist growth. Their practices have become powerful neoliberal development tools, which give veracity to human rights agendas and attract oppositionally‐figured abolitionist praxis.     

‘Education for All’ in Cambodia: Democratic Educational and Children’s Empowerment Global Values Facing State Patronage

Among countries in Southeast Asia, Cambodia hosts the most NGOs per inhabitant and is particularly influenced by international education policies. To this extent, Cambodia constitutes a pertinent fieldwork location for reflection upon the role of global governance of education in the ‘global South’. Grounded in long-term fieldwork in a village and primary school, and multi-sited fieldwork with education technocrats and functionaries at the national and provincial levels, this article examines the cooperation between the state and the ‘global-politic’ in the way that it is polarised around the development of the policy ‘Education for All’ (EFA) in Cambodia. I argue that the global actors in education are promoting a kind of ‘moral economy’ of education and that their different programmes, however diverse they may be, are underpinned by common democratic and empowerment values. These values remain fairly ‘silent’, buried beneath technocratic demands, and clash with the informal economy of patronage grafted onto the Ministry of Education. This is an informal economy to which I give some empirical depth. I defend the fact that this moral confrontation is part of the context in which a paradoxical situation has emerged and that some light needs to be shed on this paradox in a country where the post-colonial state of education agrees, to a certain extent, to delegate part of its sovereignty for the benefit of the ‘global-politic’ of education.     

Transforming Global Governance in the Post-2015 Era: Towards an Equitable and Sustainable World†

This article reports on a dialogic symposium that brought academics from a wide range of disciplines together with practitioners and activists. The purpose was to discuss key issues conditioning the possibility of establishing global governance mechanisms which could promote transition paths toward a more equitable and sustainable world. Following the structure of the symposium, the article is divided into four thematic sections. The first contextualizes the discussions by looking at the characteristics and challenges of global governance today. The second addresses power relations in global governance with a focus on the corporate and financial sectors. It discusses practices of multistakeholder governance and public–private partnerships, the unhealthy levels of corporate influence on the UN system, and the dominant discourse that naturalizes corporate power, ‘free’ trade, and corresponding definitions of ideas such as knowledge, efficiency, and development. The third section turns to sites and forms of countervailing power and practice with particular attention to transcalar approaches and social movement actors. It highlights the potential of multi-level, territorial approaches for breaking out of hierarchical and nation state-based frames and building alternative forms of democracy. It illustrates the relevance of bioregions and ecosystems as meaningful arenas for thinking about and organizing social and economic life and for managing common pool resources. It invokes the imperative of protecting the human rights framework from the multiple challenges it faces. Finally, it explores alternative ways of generating and sharing knowledge and of challenging narrowly defined ‘evidence-based’ policy by assembling legitimate, qualitative evidence rooted in lived realities. The concluding section raises the question of whether—and on what conditions—intergovernmental multilateralism can be seen as a locus for transformation, and suggests some avenues of future research.     

Punishment,support, or discipline? Taking stock of recent debates about homeless governance in neoliberal cities

An interdisciplinary debate emerged in the 1990s about the nature of homeless governance in neoliberal cities. Contributions to this discussion have interrogated the form, function, and legitimacy of contemporary homeless management. Urban scholars have differentiated three techniques of homeless governance: punishment, support, and discipline. A subset of scholarship has defined punitive governance as an illegitimate act of repression that promotes urban revitalization by excluding the homeless from urban political economies, supportive governance as a legitimate act of voluntary or coercive care that helps the homeless survive a traumatic life experience, and disciplinary governance as an illegitimate act of production that fortifies urban political economies by including rather than excluding homeless individuals into bourgeois institutions. An emerging body of research demonstrates frontline workers coordinate these techniques of governance to pursue the aims of institutional elites. This article outlines the main points of contention in this debate, examines significant empirical findings that scholars have reported, and identifies salient knowledge gaps to be addressed in future research.     

Multiple Agoras: Local and Regional Environmental Policies between Globalization and European Pathways of Transformation

Bell's well-known assumption that the nation-state is becoming too small for the big problems of life and too big for the small problems of life, has become commonplace in the contemporary debate on the nation-state in a global age. Against the background of the upcoming EU East-enlargement, the article investigates some of the environmental policy implications behind this catchphrase. Drawing on Beck's thesis of an 'unbinding of politics' it is argued that a globalizing civil society continues to be embedded across various cultural and regulatory spaces. Attempts to (re)vitalize bottom-up policy input therefore require special attention to the dynamics of regional culture and local society, where the political and the sub-political actually intersect. This, however, is not an argument for a crude bottom-up model of governance, but rather a refined understanding of multi-level governance. The argument is supported by case study material form the German-Polish border region.     

Introduction: Environmental (im)mobilities: Improving the evidence base for effective policy making

Despite the converging agreement on the linkages between climate and broader environmental change and human (im)mobilities, evidence gaps persist that often relate to data challenges. It remains necessary to improve knowledge and data to better map, understand, project, and address environmental migration, displacement, planned relocation, and immobilities. Analyses of continuing data gaps and strategies for innovative data use are key to rise to the challenge. This Special Section of International Migration highlights these gaps and presents innovative strategies to address them.     

‘Skeptics’ and ‘believers’: anti-trafficking,sex work,and migrant rights activism in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Very little is known about activism, as it relates to the issue of migration in South Africa. Yet, migration policy and migration governance are increasingly becoming important to states like South Africa, which, 22 years into democracy, finds itself being home to the second highest number of migrants in Africa. This paper fills this gap by exploring multi-level policies and advocacy experiences of activists working on migration in a post-colonial context of South Africa through the lens of key contestations around the trafficking discourse in South Africa from 2005 to 2018.     

ETHICS, REGULATION AND THE NEW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, PART I: ACCOUNTABILITY AND POWER

A generation ago, there was a major debate about the social and ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI). Interest in that debate waned from the late 1980s. However, both patterns of public risk perception and new technological developments suggest that it is time to re-open that debate. The important issues about AI arise in connection with the prospect of robotic and digital agent systems taking socially significant decisions autonomously. Now that this is possible, the key concerns are now about which decisions should be and which should not be delegated to machines, issues of regulation in the broad sense covering everything from consumer information through codes of professional ethics for designers to statutory controls, issues of design responsibility and problems of liability.     

Migration Governance and Policy in the Global South: Introduction and Overview

Building knowledge about migration governance and policy in the Global South is a priority for research and policy. The studies in this special section offer both new empirical insights and new frameworks for analysis, with key policy implications, that can enrich our discussion of these topics. They focus on issues that relate to national and sub‐national level governance and policy, speaking both to the impact of diverse governance structures and policies on the well‐being of migrants and host communities, and of the policy‐making process itself and the factors influencing that process. In so doing, they point toward promising directions for future work on these topics and underscore the value of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross‐regional analysis. This essay provides an introduction to the studies included in this collection, framing their contributions in the context of research in development and ongoing global discussions on migration policy.     

Re-spatialising migration governance: From ‘multi-level’ to ‘entangled’

Policy actors engaged in migration governance operate in complex environments characterised by spatial entanglements that bring together different levels and jurisdictions. While “levels-of-analysis” and multi-level governance (MLG) frameworks capture some of this complexity, they undertheorise the extent to which migration and mobility are both causes and consequences of other forms of spatial entanglement. This article sets forth an “entangled” approach to migration governance and applies it to the Turkish case. It discusses how historical legacies and regional ties produce enduring cross-border connections, examining diaspora engagement policies; migration diplomacy; and conflict and security in Turkey through the lens of entangled migration governance.