The Evolution of Migration Management in the Global North

The Evolution of Migration Management in the Global North explores how the radically violent migration management paradigm that dominates today's international migration has been assembled. Drawing on unique archive material, it shows how a forum of diplomats and civil servants constructed the 'transit country' as a site in which the illegal migrant became the main actor to be vilified. Policy-makers are divided between those who oppose migration, and those who support it, so long as it is properly managed. Any other position is generally seen at best as utopian.

This volume advances a new way of conceptualizing policy-making in international migration at the regional and international level. Introducing the concept of 'informal plurilateralism', Oelgemoller explores how the Inter-Governmental Consultations on Asylum, Migration and Refugees (IGC), created the hegemonic paradigm of 'Migration Management', thus enabling today's specific ways the 'migrant' has their juridico-political status violently denied. This raises crucial questions about what democracy is and about the way in which the value of a human being is established, granted or denied.

Inviting debate in a field which is often under-theorized, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, migration studies and international relations theory.