In December, the “migration week(s)” will bring U.N. member states, international organizations, migrant civil society and other stakeholders to Marrakech, Morocco. The major “official” events will be the Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and the 11th Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), for which the application process has now started. But migrant civil society organisations will also organize their own parallel and counter-events. Once more, I have compiled an outlook to central events on migration governance from above as well as from below. Continue reading
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On July 13th, the Global Compact #ForMigration has been agreed upon – but that much-lauded event by no means constitutes the end of the process. The formal adoption will take place in the “Migration Week” in Marrakech. At the center of this week (actually closer to two weeks) will be the Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) to be held on 10-11 December (plus the 11th Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) taking place the week before). There has been some uncertainty regarding the exact modalities of the GCM-conference – and while the U.N. modalities resolution might bring some clarity, it also raises further questions: 
The multi-level dimension of migration governance is gaining increasing attention – and that includes the regional and sub-regional level. As a contribution to this research, Nicola Piper, Jürgen Rüland and yours truly have guest edited a two-part special Issue for the European Journal of East Asian studies (EJEAS). The theme is “Challenging State Sovereignty: A Multi-level Approach to Southeast and East Asian Migration” and the topics of the articles range from “Mobility Norms in Free Trade Agreements” to the migration industry, securitization of migrant, refugee protection, migrant domestic workers as agents of development and pilgrimage migration to Mecca. The seven empirical studies in this Special Issue thus 
Two new special issues (SIs) on regional and global migration governance have been published and I had the opportunity to contribute articles to both of them. The first SI is dealing with multi-level “Migration Governance in an Era of Large Movements”, the second is called “The Social Governance of Transnational Migration: Perspectives from the Asia Pacific”. Also, I wrote a comment on the draft of the Global Compact for Migration. Find all the details here: 
The zero drafts for the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees are out now, with the compact for “safe, orderly and regular migration” having been being made available earlier this week. The compact is to be agreed upon in a meeting in Morocco on 10-11 December 2018 – very likely in a version with significant differences to the “zero draft”. I have not found many assessments yet, so let me share my immediate impressions: There is a solid rights-based language in particular in the vision and guiding principles but also throughout the recommendations; it is also commendable how the compact does not shy away from some touchy issues such as facilitating family reunification, access to services regardless of migration status, using migration detention only as a last resort & working towards alternatives and putting particular emphasis on the rights of domestic workers, women and children. The compact refers to many existing frameworks, but it is very notable which one is completely absent: 
Today is International Migrants Day, marking the 27th anniversary of the adoption of the “International Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families” by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Since last year there seem to have been two additional ratifications, bringing the total number up to 51. This number is unlikely to rise significantly in the near future, since the the international community (except the USA…) seems to now focus its energy on the deliberations for the planned “global compact on safe, orderly and regular migration”. These developments also dominate todays’ statements – as in the past years, I have compiled some resources surrounding International Migrants Day: 
Two edited volumes have been published for which I was able to contribute chapters on regional migration governance in #ASEAN and on migrant civil society in Asia. The first chapter is called “Labour Migration in Southeast Asia: In search of regional governance”, and appears in the third edition of “Contemporary Southeast Asia: The Politics of Change, Contestation, and Adaptation” edited by Alice D. Ba and Mark Beeson. The second one was co-authored with Daniel Kremers, is simply titled “Migration” and part of the “Routledge Handbook of Civil Society in Asia”, edited by Akihiro Ogawa. Here is some more information on the volumes and contributions: 