Global governance of labour migration: From ‘management’ of migration to an integrated rights-based approach

Abstract

In recent years, international migration has reached a firm place on the global policy agenda as evidenced by a flurry of activities and actors involved, amounting to what some commentators have come to call the ‘global governance of migration’ (Grugel and Piper 2007; Betts 2011; Koser 2010). The idea of global governance in its various conceptualisations has emerged to capture the cooperation or coordination of different actors (governmental, non-governmental and international organisations) within a network made up of formal and informal rules to reform institutions of ‘the global’ (Rittberger 2001; Kennedy et al. 2002). As a concept that took off gradually after the end of the Cold War, global governance has been used not solely for the description and analysis of complex structures within a globalising world that is no longer subject to classification into ‘first, second and third worlds’. This concept is also part of a wider attempt to change this ‘new’ world into something different or better in a normative sense (Habermann 2011).