Migration: a step too far for the contemporary global order?

ABSTRACT

Migration is arguably the single most salient issue in in Western democracies today. Anti-immigrant attitudes have fueled the rise of right-wing populist parties, have proved decisive in swaying a slim margin of the British public to support Brexit and have catalyzed delicate democracies down authoritarian tracks. We contend that because of predominant identity and security concerns, the free movement of people has never become a key element of the contemporary global order despite its qualifying, liberal credentials. Even in the European Union (EU), the integration of migration policy has remained fragmented and differentiated. These omissions are taking their toll as they generate friction between domestic and supranational goals, and as global problems – like the recent refugee crisis – lack ‘global’ or unified solutions. Migration has turned from an orphan of the global order to one of its primary challengers.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• liberalism
• international order
• European Union
• refugee crisis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Sara Wallace Goodman http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0211-985X

Frank Schimmelfennig http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1638-1819

Notes

1 That embedded liberalism was constructed on the backbone of migrant political exclusion is but a further paradox (Goodman and Pepinsky 2019).

2 This disaggregation is made available by Eurostat from 2013 to 2016.

3 ‘Orban calls for anti-immigrant takeover of EU institutions’, Financial Times, 11 January 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Wallace Goodman

Sara Wallace Goodman is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine.

Frank Schimmelfennig

Frank Schimmelfennig is Professor of European Politics at ETH Zurich, Center for Comparative and International Studies.