Mixed Migration and the vagaries of doctrine formation since 2015

Abstract

The 2018 Global Compacts on Migration and on Refugees acknowledge mixed migration – both as flow and as motivation – whilst at the same time trying very hard to (re)establish clear boundaries between the two ideal types of people mobility. Mixed migration is deeply problematic. It is the condition of possibility for “illegal migration” to be intelligible in policy terms, but it is also an expression, empirically, of reality. The notion of mixed migration had been a solution in the 1970s and 1980s for doctrine formation in the context of governing international mobility. Today, by insisting on the dubious distinction, the two Global Compacts are turning mixed migration from a solution into a problem, even as they draw on the normative framing of human rights and sustainable development. Does this move shift perspective rather than fundamentally achieving transformation of the doctrine towards a more progressive global approach in governing international mobility? Here, I argue, based on conceptual analysis of the Global Compacts, that they express a transformation rather than either returning to the conceptual past or offering something entirely new. What has not changed, however, is that in the search for solutions to governing international migration there is a reproduction of individuals as gendered and racialized subjects of global politics.

Keywords:

• Global compact on migration
• global compact on refugees
• international cooperation
• knowledge making
• masculinist protection
• mixed migration

Acknowledgements

This essay was first presented at a workshop in March 2019. It was generously supported by the Refugee Law Initiative, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of London, UK. It has also benefitted from two generous reviewers.

Notes

1 UNGA, A/CONF.231/3, 30 July 2018, hereafter: Final Draft, GCM.

2 UNGA, 73rd Session, Supplement No. 12, 13 September 2018, A/73/12 (Part II), hereafter: Final Draft, GRC.

3 www.refugeesmigrants.un.org.

4 UNGA (3 October 2016) A/Res/71/1. Resolution adopted on 19 September 2016, New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_71_1.pdf.

5 I use the term broadly and not in any of the ways conceptualised by the international community or in the myriad variations discussed and defined in different literatures.

6 The International Dialogue on Migration is the main forum for the IOM to discuss migration policy with its member and observer states and other stakeholders, as instituted by the IOM’s Constitution.

7 Draft Intervention Points of the African Group on International Cooperation Objective 23, May 2018, https://www.refugeesmigrants.un.org/sites/default/files/23_objective_statment.pdf.

8 Draft Intervention Points of the African Group on International Cooperation Objective 23, May 2018, https://www.refugeesmigrants.un.org/sites/default/files/23_objective_statment.pdf.

9 UNHCR. The Principle of non-refoulement as a norm of customary international law. Response to the question posed to UNHCR by the Federal Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany in Cases 2 BvR 1938/93, 2 BvR 1953/93, 2 BvR 1954/93, 31 January 1994. http://www.refworld.org/docid/437b6db64.html.

10 Ongoing research; see https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/government/departments/international-development/research/projects/2019/migchoice/index.aspx.