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.