The Global Compact for Migration: what could it mean for women and gender relations?

ABSTRACT

Under half of international migrants throughout the world are women. While large movements of people, human rights and humanitarian crises, and migrant deaths are not new, the public attention given to the arrivals of refugees and migrants to the shores of Europe has compelled governments to engage in a multilateral manner. In September 2016, the United Nations General Assembly held its first-ever summit dedicated to large movements of refugees and migrants, reaffirming the importance of existing legal instruments to protect refugees and migrants, and also foreseeing the development of two new Global Compacts: one on refugees, and the other for safe, orderly and regular migration. This article examines the process to elaborate the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration from a gender-responsive perspective. It takes into consideration the advocacy role that the Women in Migration Network and other civil society stakeholders have played in its development, identifies the various opportunities and gaps within the Global Compact, and explores how women’s organisations and development organisations can promote change for women in migration under the new Global Compact.     

Immigration Detention under the Global Compacts in the Light of Refugee and Human Rights Law Standards

The article explores how immigration detention is addressed in the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and investigates the potential implications of the compacts on the existing legal framework regulating the use of immigration detention. While Objective 13 of the GCM largely reflects detention‐related standards under international human rights law, the GCR makes only scarce references to detention in §60. Overall, the compacts risk inhibiting gradual endorsement of the norm of non‐detention of children. On the other hand, they rightly restate the priority for alternatives to detention for adults. States should implement the provisions of the compacts in line with their obligations under international human rights and refugee law. The compacts cannot be used as a pretext to lower domestic detention‐related standards or to diminish the validity of the existing framework governing immigration detention.     

The new regulatory state: the social powers of the European Union

The understanding of the European Union poses a challenge for Sociology and its traditional conceptions of the state. In particular, the impact of the social dimension has been underestimated and undervalued. This paper explores the implications of the developing social dimension of the European Union for European social relations in the context of globalization which allegedly reduces the power of states to act effectively in the social realm. It argues for a broader conceptualization of the social dimension and for a new conception of the regulatory state. It argues that the significance of a politico-legal project social justice. It concludes with a re-consideration of the powers of the state in an era of globalization     

International Travel Security and the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration

This article examines the security dimension of the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact for Migration and explains how the global compacts expand international cooperation on travel security. Although the Global Compact on Refugees contains relatively few security‐related provisions, many of the Global Compact for Migration's commitments are largely devoted to increasing security by strengthening border controls, improving travel documents, collecting data, using new technologies, like biometrics, and sharing data. By agreeing to increase cooperation on international travel security aimed at reducing irregular migration, migrant origin states have won commitments from migrant destination states to improve conditions for their nationals working abroad. Given that both global compacts are non‐binding and states may take actions to realize some of the compacts’ commitments but not others, the actual consequences of the compacts may vary greatly and lead to unanticipated outcomes.     

The Global Compacts on Refugees and for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration: Introduction to the Special Issue

In December 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted two Global Compacts: The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). These two compacts, while non‐binding and aspirational in nature, offer the first widely‐accepted new normative frameworks on the movement of people since the ratification of the 1951 refugee convention and its 1967 protocol. This special issue of International Migration aims to analyse the way in which these two compacts were negotiated, examine their potential impact in a number of areas, and compare the way they deal with common themes such as gender, civil society and security. This introductory article describes the background and the process of negotiating the global compacts, provides a short summary of the articles included in this special issue, and highlights gaps in the two compacts that are not elsewhere discussed herein.     

Interdisciplinary bar for the public interest: What CSR and NGO frameworks contribute to the public relations of British and European activists

This paper outlines the ways in which various literatures and exemplary organizations (Business for Social Responsibility, the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, and the Global Compact) define, set principles, and provide frameworks for corporate social responsibility (CSR). It also explores British broadcasters’ accountability mechanisms and the extent to which U.K. broadcasting activist NGOs view them as adequate CSR. The activists studied were six British broadcasting-centered and Scottish cultural NGOs that lobby in the EU and at home. The data suggested that these activists’ public relations has pro-social, pro-democratic effects and that the CSR/NGO literatures and organizational frameworks provided may enable broadcasting activists and targets to more effectively pursue CSR.     

National Governance Frameworks in the Global Compact on Refugees: Dangers and Opportunities

This article examines the treatment of national governance frameworks in the Global Compact on Refugees. Given that national governance frameworks are the primary determinants of whether a refugee can live safely, move freely, work, and access state and private services such as education, healthcare, banking and justice, their treatment in the Global Compact has important implications for future prospects for local integration, the durable solution least‐often discussed but most likely to become the de facto reality for most of the world's refugees.     

What is the relevance of regionalism in a federal European context? Some problematizing aspects

Regionalism has come into a new light. Gradually during the post‐war period, regionalism has acquired an image of being effectively neutral and capable of replacing the Junctions of other political units. But even though regionalism has become substantially boosted by the European Union and is a favoured topic in the arsenal of federalist arguments, its final outcome remains highly unpredictable. This article explores the many faces and tasks of the new regionalism.     

Are Geographical Indications a Valid Property Right? Global Trends and Challenges

This article explores what is at stake in the international conflict on geographical indications (GIs), particularly for developing countries. It first examines how the WTO panel has obliged the European Union to open its registration system to third countries and how the ongoing negotiations on GIs seem to be reaching stalemate. Initiatives showing how GIs are a key political and trade issue are identified in Turkey, India, China, Colombia and Ethiopia. Trade negotiation agendas have to handle this new balance of power, in which the reputation accompanying a good may become common.     

Implementing and Rethinking the European Union's Asylum Legislation: The Asylum Procedures Directive

The Asylum Procedures Directive, which was put in place in the context of the Common European Asylum System, is expected to both harmonise the asylum procedures in the European Union and to safeguard applicants’ rights. This article explores various steps in the implementation of the directive, starting with transnational negotiations which aim to influence domestic asylum policies. Focusing on asylum systems in Germany and Sweden, the article shows that the way decision makers implement the directive is shaped by diverging domestic asylum policies. The risk of failing common standards, however, is not only a matter of implementation, but inherent in the directive's design. Furthermore, harmonisation does not necessarily improve compliance with the principles of international refugee law. Safeguarding protection seekers’ rights requires rethinking both asylum legislation and the role of the actors who intervene in its implementation.     

Shortcomings and/or Missed Opportunities of the Global Compacts for the Protection of Forced Migrants

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) are norm‐creating exercises, in the sense of being international legal documents for a new framework that reinforces existing structures and attempt to renew migration governance globally. They were expected to further develop the protection of all migrants. However, despite some progress, there are shortcomings and/or missed opportunities in what they were able to achieve, especially in the case of the protection of forced migrants. Understanding these shortcomings and/or missed opportunities as being conceptual and institutional in nature, and to assess both these sets, this article presents the idea of forced migration and the lack of international protection of forced migrants (part 1), describes the protection of forced migrants achieved by the Compacts (part 2), and ends by assessing the shortcomings and/or missed opportunities in both Compacts (part 3).     

Social Exclusion in the European Union

Abstract

This article reviews the development of social policy in the European Union since the mid-1980s. It describes the origins and evolution of the concept of social exclusion, the dominant paradigm for social welfare policy-making in the European Union and its member states. Case examples from Great Britain and Wales provide indications of the impacts for direct services.     

Female "birds of passage" a decade later: gender and immigration in the European Union

"First, this article critically assesses the dominant accounts of the sequence of labor migration and family reunification and argues that it is time to reclaim the heterogeneity of women's past migratory experiences in our understanding of European patterns of post-war immigration. Second, it examines family migration, covering diverse forms of family reunification and formation which, although the dominant form of legal immigration into Europe since the 1970s, has received relatively little attention. Third, it explores the implications of the diversification of contemporary female migration in the European Union and argues for the necessity of taking account of the reality of changing patterns of employment, households and social structures to advance our understanding of European immigration."     

The social dimension of European cohesion policy in a 27-state Europe: an analysis of the European Social Fund

On the basis of the relevant content of the Treaty of Lisbon (rejected in the Irish referendum of June 2008), this paper examines European Union cohesion policy as a fundamental dimension of the scant European social policy. In the context of a 27-state union with a slim budget, the European Social Fund remains the main social instrument of cohesion. An analysis of its application in the Spanish Autonomous Community of Galicia affords insights into the economic and political impact of European Union economic, social and territorial cohesion policy.     

The Global Compact for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration: What's Next

The Director General of IOM reflects on the next steps to implement the Global Compact for Migration, IOM's new responsibility as Coordinator of the UN Migration Network, and the role that research can play in realizing the Compact's potential.     

Policy Coherence for Sustainable Agricultural Development: Uncovering Prospects and Pretence within the Swedish Policy for Global Development

Within the European Union, promotion of ‘policy coherence’ is intended to improve co‐ordination across sectors and groups of professionals, who make competing claims for agricultural development in low‐income countries. This article examines the prospects for stakeholders in Sweden to implement such a policy, drawing on experiences from the launch of a national multi‐stakeholder platform with the participation of 99 organisations. Its findings demonstrate institutional fragmentation and struggles for legitimacy, with the internationally heralded Swedish Policy for Global Development operated largely as a tokenistic instrument, legitimised by the pretence of stakeholder engagement. It argues for improved institutional support to facilitate cross‐sectoral dialogues to deconstruct social boundaries which are no longer relevant.     

Intercultural consolidation: exploring the experiences of internationally qualified social workers and the English post-qualifying framework

The increasing movement of social workers from one country to another, especially with the expansion of the European Union, appears likely to pose a number of challenges to host countries in terms of receiving, supporting and developing social workers who trained in other countries. This paper explores the provision of a post-qualifying ‘consolidation’ module to a group of 15 internationally qualified social workers and evaluates both the student experience and the cultural challenges faced by individual social workers who came to practise in England after qualifying in their home countries. These social workers undertook the module at the University of Greenwich in London, England, and were selected for this as a part of a project with two London boroughs. Factors which have an important influence on successful ‘settlement’ into a new role and culture are discussed and analysed. It is argued that the provision of post-qualifying training can be a key part of the acculturation process but timing and other factors need to be considered. The paper explores what was learned from the project and its evaluation about the experiences and support needs of internationally qualified social workers. The project took place in 2007–2008 and was evaluated by students, the teaching team, stakeholders from services and service users.     

The UN Global Compact for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration: Its Impact on Asia

This article focuses on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), a landmark international document that builds on the momentum of a decade of initiatives at the international level on migration governance, and its impact on Asia from the perspective of South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, and South Korea. While none of these countries voted against the adoption of the GCM, there are significant differences in how individual countries approached the commitments made in the GCM. These perspectives were articulated in a webinar hosted by Metropolis Asia on 20 June 2018 and in governmental statements made at the UN international conference when the GCM was adopted. This article also discusses the challenges confronting the implementation of the GCM. While the Compact resulted from inclusive and intensive negotiations and many compromises, the road towards realizing its goals will be at least as challenging as the road that led to its adoption. In spite of these challenges, the GCM is a ground‐breaking representation of the first multilateral framework for migration governance. Its success rests upon the recognition that addressing the challenges and maximizing the benefits of migration require true international cooperation, renewed commitment and meaningful action on the commitments agreed to.     

The European Union in the flows of international students: attractiveness and inconsistency

This paper aims to describe the overall pattern of flows of international students and to determine the factors that can explain the variation of countries' attractiveness. In a second step, it assesses the position of the European Union as a whole in these flows at the global level. Is the EU strong enough in the global competition to attract the best brains? Besides, it shows how attractiveness factors can vary according to the profile of a sample of European Union member countries. In the third section of the paper, we raise some reflexions on the relations of the EU with its neighbourhood with respect to the flows of international students. In fact, the EU may not be able to maintain its status as a major power if it does not better regulate its relations with neighbour countries, especially in the domain of higher education and students' mobility.