Global Migration Governance

Unlike many other trans-boundary policy areas, international migration lacks coherent global governance. There is no UN migration organization and states have signed relatively few multilateral treaties on migration. Instead sovereign states generally decide their own immigration policies. However, given the growing politicization of migration and the recognition that states cannot always address migration in isolation from one another, a debate has emerged about what type of international institutions and cooperation are required to meet the challenges of international migration. Until now, though, that emerging debate on global migration governance has lacked a clear analytical understanding of what global migration governance actually is, the politics underlying it, and the basis on which we can make claims about what 'better' migration governance might look like.

In order to address this gap, the book brings together a group of the world's leading experts on migration to consider the global governance of different aspects of migration. The chapters offer an accessible introduction to the global governance of low-skilled labour migration, high-skilled labour migration, irregular migration, lifestyle migration, international travel, refugees, internally displaced persons, human trafficking and smuggling, diaspora, remittances, and root causes. Each of the chapters explores the three same broad questions: What, institutionally, is the global governance of migration in that area? Why, politically, does that type of governance exist? How, normatively, can we ground claims about the type of global governance that should exist in that area? Collectively, the chapters enhance our understanding of the international politics of migration and set out a vision for international cooperation on migration.

Alexander Betts is Director of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Global Migration Governance project, a Fellow of Wadham College, and Hedley Bull Research Fellow in International Relations, University of Oxford. His research focuses on the international politics of migration and refugee protection, with a geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author of many books, including UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection into the Twenty-First Century (with Gil Loescher and James Milner, 2008), Forced Migration and Global Politics (2009), Protection by Persuasion: International Cooperation in the Refugee Regime (2009), and Refugees in International Relations (with Gil Loescher, Oxford University Press, 2010). His work has been published in a range of peer reviewed journals.