Symposium on framing global migration law transnational mobility, the international law of aliens, and the origins of global migration law

Abstract

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.