1st Edition

The Evolution of Migration Management in the Global North

By Christina Oelgemoller Copyright 2017
    214 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    214 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The Evolution of Migration Management in the Global North explores how the radically violent migration management paradigm that dominates today's international migration has been assembled. Drawing on unique archive material, it shows how a forum of diplomats and civil servants constructed the 'transit country' as a site in which the illegal migrant became the main actor to be vilified. Policy-makers are divided between those who oppose migration, and those who support it, so long as it is properly managed. Any other position is generally seen at best as utopian.





    This volume advances a new way of conceptualizing policy-making in international migration at the regional and international level. Introducing the concept of 'informal plurilateralism', Oelgemöller explores how the Inter-Governmental Consultations on Asylum, Migration and Refugees (IGC), created the hegemonic paradigm of 'Migration Management', thus enabling today's specific ways the 'migrant' has their juridico-political status violently denied. This raises crucial questions about what democracy is and about the way in which the value of a human being is established, granted or denied.





    Inviting debate in a field which is often under-theorized, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Migration Studies and International Relations Theory.

    Introduction

    Part One: Migration Management as contested yet normalized discourse

    1 Migration Management as guiding typology of policy practice

    2 The migration nexi

    Conclusion to Part One

    Part Two: The emergence of Migration Management as recorded by the IGC

    3 Geopolitical ruptures

    4 The IGC’s informal plurilateralism

    Conclusion to Part Two

    Part Three: Ethico-political evaluation of Migration Management

    5 Technocracy: banality of evil?

    6 The generative potential of suspension

    Conclusion to Part Three

    Conclusion: Migration Management – disagreeing with violence and consensus-democracyAppendix 1: IGC documents cited

    Biography

    Christina Oelgemöller is a Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Politics, History and International Relations at Loughborough University, UK.

    "This intriguing book by Christina Oelgemöller – an interdisciplinary scholar and researcher with a talent for transcending conventional approaches to analysis – offers a theoretically well-informed and in-depth geopolitical analysis of the migration man-agement phenomenon. She elaborates on the social constructions of ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ migrant underpinning the contemporary migration management policies and practices of the global North."

    Romana Zidar, Senior Researcher, Social Protection Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana