Mapping Global Migration Law, or the Two Batavias

Abstract

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.