Global encounters: exploring the political foundations of global migration governance

Résumé En

This chapter analyses global encounters around migration in the 2000s and 2010s in which actors and institutions shaped the emergence of global migration governance. We focus on two series of events and processes that have contributed to the foundations of global migration governance in this policy field: the United Nationas High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development (HLD) in 2006 and 2013, and the meetings of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) from 2007 onwards. These global gatherings brought together states, international organisations, and civil society actors in order to further cooperation and consolidate multilateral processes. As such, they were expected to create spaces where actors could advance migration governance, promote or consolidate its rules and norms, and advocate for the adoption of legal provisions for the protection for migrants. However, these forums eventually came to focus on shaping discussions on migration and development as less politicised issues that could be dealt with internationally. We argue that these global encounters manifest the power relations between actors and across organisations of migration governance at the global level. They offer venues where conflicts around norms and practices of migration governance become visible, but that also provide opportunity structures to create new discourses and socialise actors into cooperative behaviour. Finally, we argue that these venues are temporary institutions with varying degrees of rootedness and impact in global migration politics. By describing the main global arenas that have gathered international actors in the 2000s and 2010s, this chapter offers insights into the genesis of migration governance from the situated perspective of these global encounters.