ARI Working Paper Series

The global debate on migration has experienced a major push toward the “management of migra¬tion” in the form of international cooperation in dealing with migration issues of all countries implicated, related to a number of global initiatives. The main objective of this global agenda is to promote cooperation among states in dealing with various dimensions and the complexity of international migration. This is largely a state-run process. A parallel development is the recent revival of a rights-based approach to the management of migration by the International Labour Organisation aimed at addressing the protective deficit for migrants in current policy practices by individual states.

Although this shift in the migration policy debate to focus on international cooperation is primarily concerned with control over entry and exit as well as prevention of irregular migration, broader human rights issues as well as the rights of foreign workers have also entered into the discussion. But it is yet to be seen whether there is in fact a serious concern with migrants’ human rights and whether efforts toward implementation are made. In other words, the central question is: Are these two trends—managing migration and the protection of migrants’ rights—going hand-in-hand or do they constitute conflicting areas of concern and policy (with rights issues being sidelined)? And if so how do we reconcile these? And how are the control-protection dynamics played out in the context of Asia from a regional migration perspective?

The institutional structures involved in the ‘management of migration’ can be analytically approached from the perspective of ‘governance’. In this paper, three levels of governance of migration are addressed: (1) the global normative and institutional level, and specifically the dialectics between the ILO’s attempt to revive a migrants’ rights agenda on the one hand, and a global shift toward an overtly utilitarian approach to migration; (2) the regional level and cooperation by states in the form of intra-regional processes; and (3) the meso level, i.e. non-governmental organisations involved in political activism with specific reference to regional networks (most notably in Asia and Europe) formed to promote migrants’ rights.