scholarly journals Mapping Global Migration Law, or the Two Batavias

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 504-508
Author(s):  
Chantal Thomas

This symposium has marshaled numerous insights regarding the emergence of a general field of inquiry within international law on the movement of people. To move into this conceptual terrain has required a certain amount of defiance of the conventional wisdom that questions of migration are within the purview of the sovereign state, and a matter of sovereign territorial prerogative. Yet this conventional wisdom manifestly no longer describes the times. There are now a host of limitations under positive international law on the prerogative of states to control rights of noncitizens to entry, residence, and work within their territories; and limitations on states’ rights to exclude or expel noncitizens therefrom.

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 134-135
Author(s):  
Jaya Ramji-Nogales ◽  
Peter J. Spiro

Part I of this symposium on framing global migration law introduced broad conceptual parameters of a new field, looking back to its international law roots and forward to a new orientation beyond the strictures of refugee law. Part II looks to situate global migration law along a range of theoretical dimensions. Jacqueline Bhabha establishes the continuities of human movement in a historical context, modern and premodern. Far from representing a radical departure, the current migration “crisis” is consistent with massive migrations over the ages. Tendayi Achiume considers migration through the lens of colonization and decolonization. Out-migration from Europe was a core economic element of the colonization project; Achiume suggests that contemporary migration from former dependencies to metropolitan powers will correct co-dependencies that continue to advantage postcolonial powers. Focusing Achiume's lens on the problem of human trafficking, Janie Chuang complicates the binary depictions of economic migration that underpin contemporary international law. She suggests that global migration law's grounding in a migrant-centered perspective could help state actors to understand the structural causes of modern-day exploitation, enabling a shift from a crime control approach to a human mobility paradigm.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 509-513
Author(s):  
Iris Goldner Lang

If global migration law “includes all levels of the law,” then the European Union represents the most developed instance of the interplay of national, regional, and international law. Migration law in the European Union involves the interaction of EU Member States’ national laws, EU regional law, and international law. This complex interchange of different migratory legal regimes is the consequence of diverse, and sometimes conflicting, objectives and interests of the Union and its Member States, and the nature of EU law itself. This essay explores the impact of these three levels of the law on the four migratory regulatory categories—EU citizens, “desirable” third-country nationals, asylum seekers, and all other third-country nationals—and the three objectives associated with these categories. The predominance of one legal regime over another varies depending on the regulatory category of migrants and the objectives associated therewith. While describing the existing legal systems, the essay outlines their attributes and shortcomings, the most prominent being: a clear rift between the rights granted to EU citizens and to third-country nationals; EU Member States’ determination to reserve to their respective national territories a high level of national control over labor migration; and significant deficiencies of the EU asylum law which were brought to the surface by the recent refugee influx into the EU.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
Frédéric Mégret

To speak of a “global migration law” is challenging, perhaps even quite provocative, in an era in which walls are being continuously erected at borders and seas transformed into mass graves. The ambition of international law often seems to be to rescue what can still be saved: the refugee regime for example, or minimally decent treatment of migrants once under the jurisdiction of a third country. A global law of migration, then, might be as much if not more the law of obstacles to human mobility than a body of law premised on a more fundamental commitment to freedom of movement.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Peter J. Spiro

When I started teaching international law more than twenty years ago, it was still possible to be an international law generalist. In the U.S. legal academy, the likes of Henkin, Schachter, Franck, and McDougal covered the full range of public international law subjects. (Some even managed to stay on top of private international law, too.) Today, being an international law generalist is impractical; it's simply too difficult to keep current with the breadth of international law. From the scholar's perspective, it's a case of “be careful what you wish for.” A generalist international law orientation used to be possible because there was so little of it, both on the ground and in the scholarship. Those mid-century saplings—the various distinctive fields within international law—have grown to mature oaks, and expert knowledge of their many crevices and branches is beyond the capacity of any single observer. Not only does international law defy individual mastery, but the level of specialization now makes it difficult to talk across these different areas. My colleague in international criminal law might as well be a domestic family law person for purposes of professional points of connection. We both attend the ASIL Annual Meeting, but we no longer really speak the same language.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 153-158
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Awad

There is no corpus of law that is global in nature. Rather, “global” migration law is a collection of legal instruments situated at levels ascending from the subnational to the international levels. International law instruments contribute to the global governance of international migration at the international and regional levels. Two issues arise with respect to the effectiveness of these instruments: voluntary state accession and subsequent enforcement, even when states are parties to them. Domestic law regulates issues of international migration at the national and subnational levels. Enforcement is assumed to be more effective here. But this effectiveness varies according to the power of states, their levels of development and their capacities.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 159-164
Author(s):  
Diego Acosta

The field of global migration law looks beyond international law to incorporate all levels of the law, including the regional. This essay explores the regional regulation of mobility, which has indeed become a central subject of discussion and academic analysis. The expansion of human rights law coupled with the explosion of regional processes of integration are the two most important phenomena that have limited the state's capacity to restrict the entry of foreigners and their rights. It should come as no surprise that regional agreements facilitating mobility have proliferated and now involve around 120 countries, either at a bilateral or multilateral level. For one thing, most global migration is regional, whether in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Southern and Central America. In addition, regional instruments can be agreed on more rapidly and, in principle, introduce higher standards of protection and rights due to the more limited number of actors involved in the negotiations. There is, of course, huge variation across regions as to the degree of development of the various agreements, the categories of individuals entitled to mobility and equal treatment and their effective application and enforcement mechanism devices.


2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clíodhna Murphy

AbstractWhile the rights of domestic workers are expanding in international law, including through the adoption of the ILO Domestic Workers Convention in 2011, migrant domestic workers remain particularly vulnerable to employment-related abuse and exploitation. This article explores the intersection of the employment law and migration law regimes applicable to migrant domestic workers in the United Kingdom, France and Ireland. The article suggests that the precarious immigration status of many migrant domestic workers renders employment protections, such as they exist in each jurisdiction, largely illusory in practice for this group of workers. The labour standards contained in the Domestic Workers Convention, together with the recommendations of the UN Committee on Migrant Workers on the features of an appropriate immigration regime for migrant domestic workers, are identified as providing an alternative normative model for national regulatory frameworks.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 147-152
Author(s):  
Janie A. Chuang

Our understanding of human trafficking has changed significantly since 2000, when the international community adopted the first modern antitrafficking treaty—the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol). Policy attention has expanded beyond a near-exclusive focus on sex trafficking to bring long-overdue attention to nonsexual labor trafficking. That attention has helped surface how the lack of international laws and institutions pertaining to labor migration can enable—if not encourage—the exploitation of migrant workers. Many migrant workers throughout the world labor under conditions that do not qualify as trafficking yet suffer significant rights violations for which access to protection and redress is limited. Failing to attend to these “lesser” abuses creates and sustains vulnerability to trafficking.


2015 ◽  
pp. 289-306
Author(s):  
Tijana Surlan

Recognition is an instrument of the public international law founded in the classical international law. Still, it preserves its main characteristics formed in the period when states dominated as the only legal persons in international community. Nevertheless, the instrument of recognition is today as vibrant as ever. As long as it does not have a uniform legal definition and means of application, it leaves room to be applied to very specific cases. In this paper, the instrument of recognition is elaborated from two aspects - theoretical and practical. First (theoretical) part of the paper presents main characteristics of the notion of recognition, as presented in main international law theories - declaratory and constitutive theory. Other part of the paper is focused on the recognition in the case of Kosovo. Within this part, main constitutive elements of state are elaborated, with special attention to Kosovo as self-proclaimed state. Conclusion is that Kosovo does not fulfill main constitutive elements of state. It is not an independent and sovereign state. It is in the status of internationalized entity, with four international missions on the field with competencies in the major fields of state authority - police, judiciary system, prosecution system, army, human rights, etc. Main normative framework for the status of Kosovo is still the UN Resolution 1244. It is also the legal ground for international missions, confirming non-independent status of Kosovo. States that recognized Kosovo despite this deficiency promote the constitutive theory of recognition, while states not recognizing Kosovo promote declaratory theory. Brussels Agreement, signed by representatives of Serbia and Kosovo under the auspices of the EU, has also been elaborated through the notion of recognition - (1) whether it represents recognition; (2) from the perspective of consequences it provokes in relations between Belgrade and Pristina. Official position of Serbian Government is clear - Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state. On the other hand, subject matter of Brussels Agreement creates new means of improvement for Kosovo authorities in the north part of Kosovo. Thus, Serbian position regarding the recognition is twofold - it does not recognize Kosovo in foro externo, and it completes its competences in foro domestico. What has been underlined through the paper and confirmed in the conclusion is that there is not a recognition which has the power to create a state and there is not a non-recognition which has the power to annul a state.


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