Antoine Pécoud

The politics of international migration management

‘International migration management’ has become a popular catchphrase for a wide range of initiatives that aim at renewing the policies pertaining to the cross-border movements of people. It is used by numerous actors, both within and outside governments. At the international level, the term is intensively used by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) (whose motto is ‘Managing migration for the benefit of all’), the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and other international agencies. At the national level, the approach in terms of ‘management’ pervades, for example, the British government’s White Paper on immigration, ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven’.

Entrepreneurship and identity: cosmopolitanism and cultural competencies among German‐Turkish businesspeople in Berlin

This article investigates the connections between entrepreneurship and identity in the case of Turkish entrepreneurs in Berlin. It presents empirical material describing how they run their businesses in fields such as finding premises, recruiting staff or targeting a clientele. Shop‐owners are shown to rely both on co‐ethnic and non co‐ethnic resources and it is argued that it is the combination of these two sets of resources that enables businesses to survive. This implies that entrepreneurs live and work in a culturally mixed context and that they have the necessary skills and cultural competencies to handle this complexity. The concept of cosmopolitanism is proposed to address this identity pattern and it is argued that German‐Turkish businesspeople display a kind of cosmopolitanism that is characterised by its non‐elite, practical and half‐conscious dimensions.

Human Trafficking, Information Campaigns, and Strategies of Migration Control

Information campaigns have been launched since the 1990s in central and eastern Europe to prevent human trafficking and undocumented migration. They attempt to reduce emigration before migrants reach the border and therefore take place within the reinforcement of migration controls. They are designed to discourage potential migrants from leaving by promoting a negative image of migration to western Europe, thus relying on the questionable assumption that information plays a key role in migration decisions. By associating undocumented migration with human trafficking, these campaigns furthermore display moral and political ambiguities. This article discusses their ideological basis and the ethical issues they raise.

International migration, border controls and human rights: Assessing the relevance of a right to mobility

Abstract This article discusses the arguments in favor of and against a right to mobility. It argues that contemporary migration and border policies are largely restrictive but still fail to meet their proclaimed objectives which call for alternative approaches to international human flows. From a human rights perspective, tight border controls are accompanied by major challenges; including trafficking, the asylum crisis, and the death and vulnerability of irregular migrants; which ultimately threaten the moral foundations of liberal democracies. In this context, a right to mobility may constitute a relevant answer and the article examines the implications of such a right in terms of world justice, social cohesion, economic wealth, security, and border/migration governance.

Disciplining the Transnational Mobility of People

Until recently, one of the most popular catchwords in migration debates was “Fortress Europe”. Borrowed from World War II military history, the term referred to European governments’ aspiration to fully control their borders. The European continent was, in this respect, at the forefront of the “global migration crisis” (Weiner, 1995): Since the 1990s, the developed world in general has been characterized by increasing fears over the consequences of human mobility; the reaction has been the erection of “walls around the west” (Andreas and Snyder, 2000) and, more generally, a dramatic intensification and diversification of control strategies. While much has been said about the desirability and feasibility of such a political project 1 , this book 2 attempts to shed light on the ways in which the objective of controlling migration has unfolded in a broader endeavour to discipline the cross-border movements of people. What this volume proposes to call the “disciplining of transnational human mobility” has, at first sight, little in common with the militarization of borders or the surveillance of foreigners. This is not to say that the fixation with control has disappeared, or that immigration and border policies have fundamentally changed. Rather, it is to recognize that the objective of defending receiving states from unwanted migrants is both embedded in, and complemented by, the larger goal to organize human mobility and discipline people’s movements and behaviours. “Managed migration” (or “migration management”) is perhaps the new catchword here. It reflects the growing recognition that the risks linked to uncontrollable and destabilizing migration flows can be addressed by a deep reorganization of the patterns that govern human mobility; it also embodies the aspiration to both strictly control human mobility

International Organisations and the Politics of Migration

The last two decades have seen major shifts in the way international organisations (IOs) address migration. While state sovereignty remains central in the politics of migration, IOs are increasingly developing their visions regarding how the cross-border movements of people should be governed (or ‘managed’) and, in some cases, they have become important actors in the design and implementation of migration policy. Research on the role and functions of IOs remains scarce, however, and there are major uncertainties, concerning not only their actual influence, but also the political context in which they operate and the outcome of their initiatives. According to their advocates, the involvement of IOs would enable greater international cooperation, which would lead to policies that pay greater attention to human rights and development imperatives. Yet, at times, interventions by IOs seem to reinforce existing imbalances, as these organisations primarily tend to align themselves with the interests and agenda of developed receiving states. In addition, the work of IOs is embedded in a complex institutional setting, characterised by sometimes-problematic institutional relations between them, as well as between IOs and other international cooperation mechanisms.

The UN Convention on Migrant Workers’ Rights and International Migration Management

This paper examines the relationship between the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and contemporary discourses on international migration management. It shows that, while both converge on a number of points such as multilateral cooperation in policy making or the need for a comprehensive approach to migration, the Convention is largely ignored by most of the initiatives taking place under the “migration management” umbrella, and that it therefore remains an under-ratified treaty. To understand this situation, the paper analyses the obstacles encountered by the Convention and shows that further acceptance of the Convention is hampered by profound political obstacles. It therefore argues that, if migration management has introduced shifts in states’ approach to migration, it has so far been unable to put migrants’ rights at the core of this process, and that this may ultimately jeopardise its success.

Emergence of entrepreneurship among Filipino migrants in Paris

This article documents the emergence of self-employment among Filipino migrants in Paris, a pattern of economic incorporation that departs from the predominance of Filipinos in the domestic work sector in Western Europe. After presenting the characteristics of Filipino migration to France, the article describes the embeddedness of Filipino entrepreneurship in different kinds of networks that structure the Filipino population. Findings suggest that Filipino entrepreneurship is part of overlapping networks based not only upon national origin, but also on regional belongings, class, religion and sexual orientation. Conflicts often characterize the relationship between these networks. Other than relying on Filipino networks, success in self-employment also requires strong ties to other groups, as well as transnational connections. Factors affecting the future prospects of self-employment are also discussed.

Overcoming the Ethical Dilemmas of Skilled Migration? An Analysis of International Narratives on the “Brain Drain”

Migration-related issues have, since approximately 2000, been the object of increased attention at the international level. This has led, among other things, to the production of international narratives, which aim both at understanding migration and at proposing policy recommendations on how to address it, with the objective of improving the governance of migration at the global level. But this implies overcoming dilemmas stemming from the diverging interests of states and other actors (such as NGOs and the private sector). This article examines the way in which international migration narratives address skilled migration, which is characterized by some of the clearest political trade-offs between stakeholders. It argues that these narratives attempt to speak to all parties and conciliate contradictory arguments about what should be done to discursively overcome policy dilemmas and create a consensus. Although this is line with the mandate of international organizations, it depoliticizes migration issues.

What do we know about the International Organization for Migration

ABSTRACT This article provides a review of the literature on the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and serves as an introduction to the JEMS special issue devoted to this organisation. IOM has long been a neglected research topic. Since the 1990s, however, it has experienced substantial growth; its role and visibility in the global politics of migration have increased, which has culminated in IOM’s elevation to a UN-related organisation status in 2016. This has spurred growing interest in its history, structure, and activities. The main argument developed in this article is that IOM exemplifies some of the key changes currently taking place in the way international migration is apprehended and governed. This is analysed in terms of four main research issues: (1) the role of IOM in migration politics and its relationship to state sovereignty, (2) IOM’s managerial and market-inspired approach to the role of migration in the global economy, (3) IOM’s relationship to civil society and the implications of its activities in terms of human rights and humanitarian protection, and (4) IOM’s normative influence on the production of knowledge and the way migration is intellectually and politically constructed as a research and policy issue.