A global social contract: New steps towards a rights-based approach to migration governance?

With his determination to combine his academic work with policy advocacy in the ‘international organizations’ sphere, Bob Deacon was a valued member of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) network of collaborating researchers over nearly two decades. In 2000, he participated in the very first meeting Thandika Mkandawire convened to conceptualize the programme on Social Policy in a Development Context. In the following years, he attended many UNRISD events and published with us. ¹ Bob’s work on global and regional social policy was an important complement to UNRISD’s more frequent focus on the national level.

Synergies were evident in another area as well. UNRISD has conducted several research projects linking migration and social policy, highlighting the challenge of protecting migrants in contexts where local populations have only limited access to public social protection schemes and social services and where most people work in the informal economy, the typical situation in the case of South-South migration. Another UNRISD inquiry asked how to improve migration policies and migration governance in regional contexts, and what role regional governance mechanisms could play in the absence of a coordinated global system of labour migration. It was in this context I collaborated with Bob Deacon, as he joined our project (Deacon, 2013), and I joined his project on regional governance, migration, and social protection in Africa and Europe he led as UNESCO-UNU Chair in Regional Integration, Migration and Free Movement of People at UNU-CRIS in Bruges, Belgium (Deacon et al., 2013).

The results of these research inquiries on the regional governance of migration were not as encouraging as we had hoped. Even if some positive examples in terms of legislation and regional frameworks exist (in particular, free movement and social rights for migrants in the European Union (EU) and Mercosur), regional bodies and especially associated funding mechanisms often turned out to be too weak to level the playing field between migrants and nationals. Furthermore, diverging interests and power asymmetries loomed large between the different member states of integration projects, two of the main conditions Bob had identified as obstacles that would prevent implementation of effective regional social policy for migrants (Deacon, 2013).

Interestingly, things started to move again at the global level shortly after completion of these projects. Several global crises and unprecedented numbers of people escaping armed conflict, natural disasters, and poverty created a new sense of urgency to which the international community finally responded. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its ambitious vision of transforming our world and leaving no one behind was a further catalyst. ² And last but not least, civil society, trade unions, and social movements have tirelessly advocated for reforms of migration and labour governance at national, regional, and global levels.

The big criticism levelled by civil society and migrants’ advocacy groups against the existing framework or practice of labour migration governance was that it was an approach of ‘migration management’, rather than a rights-based approach to migration (Hujo and Piper, 2015).

The rights-based approach to migration is based on international human rights law and should underpin all migration policies: under international human rights law (all nine human rights treaties), all migrants are entitled to the respect, protection, and full enjoyment of their human rights, regardless of their migration status. Legal instruments, such as the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (1990), ILO conventions (No. 97 migration for employment, 143 on migrant workers, 189 on decent work for domestic workers) and recommendations (R202 on social protection floors, or on the informal economy R204), as well as international law such as refugee, labour, humanitarian and other law, protect and promote the rights of migrants and refugees.

However, conventions related to labour migration, for example, have lower rates of ratification, and actual implementation of these rights remains a challenge in most countries (see the contribution of Köhler in this issue). In the past, nation states were reluctant to agree to more binding supranational rules and agreements on migration, especially labour migration, with voluntary coordination mechanisms such as the Global Forum on Migration prevailing. International organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) or the International Labour Organization (ILO) have developed initiatives and guidance notes for policymakers (e.g. the ILO Fair Migration Agenda, the IOM migration governance framework), researchers have published evidence-based recommendations, and civil society and migrant advocacy organizations have made multiple suggestions on how to reform the system. Over decades, however, little to nothing has happened. Common practice instead has been the management of migration approach, a neutral or depoliticized way to ‘tackle’ migration which is firmly grounded in a neoliberal market ideology, and considers migration not as a symptom of that system’s most apparent development failures but as part of the flexibility of international labour markets that create a win-win situation for all (Delgado Wise, 2018).

Are we now at a turning point? Should the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2016, and the fresh Global Compact on Migration (GCM) (2018), raise our expectations about the likelihood of a more coordinated, fair, and rights-based global migration governance system (UN, 2018)?

One of the key achievements in the recent debates is the fact that efforts are being made at the highest level to overcome dichotomies between rights approaches and development approaches to migration, and to recognize the complex nature of migration, which requires integrated policies, coherence between different policy areas and decision-making levels, and stronger bottom-up participation and migrant agency.

Implementing the 2030 Agenda, including the Paris Agreement and the Sendai Framework, successfully, would go a long way in reducing push factors for migration and flight. Indeed, the importance of addressing the root causes of migration is now part of the political mainstream discourse in Western countries or the Global North. While such political declarations are laudable, it needs to be recognized that migration is here to stay, that it has multiple benefits, and that it is a basic human right to work and move in freedom and security. Civil society and critical actors should hold governments to account on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the GCM, for example, by analyzing and monitoring whether development, security and migration policies are transformative and empowering, redistributing and sharing resources and power, or if they continue to operate according to the migration management logic.

Bob was sceptical about the global governance vision of the SDGs: he detected a number of blind spots regarding global redistribution, global taxation, global regulation in finance and trade, and resource mobilization, as well as a lack of concern to strengthen global governance institutions (Deacon, 2016). We do not know what his assessment of the GCM would have been – but it would certainly have been grounded in a thorough and critical analysis of its achievements, shortcomings, and potential risks in the implementation process. Following his example and continuing his struggle for a rights-based approach to migration, it is the task of critical civil society, academics, governments and international organizations to push for the best implementation of the new compact, underpinned by rigorous research evidence and legitimized through inclusive political processes.