Overcoming Insecurities: The Future of Human Mobility Regimes

Introduction

A hard look at today’s discourses, attitudes, and policies on human mobility often evokes a bleak picture.^[i] Human mobility—a broad term that includes issues related to immigration, emigration, displacement, return, and diaspora relations^[1]—is frequently associated with crisis, and many states apply securitized approaches that treat people on the move as threats to national security, identity, and economic interests. It often feels as if states successfully erect figurative (and sometimes very concrete) walls around what they see as the last bastion of sovereignty: migrant and refugee admissions. Governments attempt to immobilize populations or to keep them far from their borders, which creates and exacerbates their hardships, vulnerabilities, and insecurities.^[2]

Contrary to this policy stance, human mobility is a quintessential adaptation strategy that has the potential to lead to significant human development improvements for those on the move, the communities that receive them, and the communities from which they originate. Steeped in the day-to-day struggles of advancing a more just and effective governance of human mobility, it is easy to overlook important macro trends that take place over time. If we take a long-term perspective, states’ hegemony over these issues are less pronounced. And while I too am impatient with the pace of progress, in this essay I will lay out three areas of change, which make me optimistic about the emergence of a more inclusive and equitable governance of mobility in the future. I believe that by the year 2100, a combination of (1) advances in norms related to human mobility; (2) changes in the system of global governance; and (3) demographic and technological changes will ultimately produce global, regional, and national regimes for human mobility that are safer, fairer, and more sustainable.

Looking Back to Look Ahead

To overcome status quo bias, it is helpful to look back at key changes that have occurred in the past 75 years. In 1946, the year prior to the founding of the Journal of International Affairs, the membership of the still-new United Nations (UN) comprised merely 35 countries. After 1960, decolonization of European colonies added another three dozen new states in Asia and Africa. This process, as well as the formation of new states, led to the current UN membership of 193 independent countries.^[ii] The global community had not yet adopted the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, any of the core UN’s human rights treaties,^[iii] or the 1951 UN Refugee convention and its 1967 Protocol that made refugee protections global. And neither the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) nor the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had been established.^[iv]

In today’s world, it is hard to think about international movements without passports and visas. However, Torpey’s (2018) historical deep-dive into the “invention of the passport” shows that these travel documents are not only a recent invention, the wide-spread use of which is connected to World War I, but that there were strong calls for their abolition after World War II as a means for states to monopolize the movement of persons.^[3] Thus, maybe a world without passports is less utopian than we commonly assume.

This illustrates that even over a relatively short period of time, significant developments can take place. What then are the key factors that will determine mobility regimes in 2100?

Speculating how human society could be politically organized in 300 years, Wimmer (2021) envisions five different scenarios, namely an “anarchic scenario without any states, a scenario with a thousand or more ministates based on shared cultural identities, an imperial scenario with a few states each claiming to represent an entire civilization, a world with culturally heterogeneous and highly efficient Continental states and finally a world state.”^[4] Although the predictions in this essay do not look as far ahead as that, future studies show that foretelling the times to come is fraught with challenges.^[5] To forecast the next 75 years, I will use insights from processes that are unfolding today at the global, regional, national, and local levels. Unavoidably, the predictions are based on observations and judgments that may not be shared by other analysts. I have, however, attempted to make it clear what the predictions are based on.

Changing Norms about Human Mobility

The last three quarters of a century have brought about many important normative changes. Some pertain to the international system of governance and its implications for the extent and limits of sovereignty. Other changes relate specifically to ideas and norms about human mobility.

During the past 75 years, the global community has adopted the most important human rights treaties and established monitoring bodies to push for their implementation. This is not limited to the core human treaties I mentioned above, but to a plethora of global and regional treaties.^[6] Needless to say, their effective implementation is faulty, and the lack of robust enforcement mechanisms means that several countries flagrantly violate core norms on a regular basis.^[7] Despite its shortcomings, it’s important to highlight how the global human rights system has in fact influenced state behavior. Massive human rights violations are now recognized as a reason for the UN Security Council to become active, which might even elicit military intervention, authorized by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, to prevent mass atrocities under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine.^[8] Potential refugee flows can be regarded as “threats to the peace,” and hence trigger the UN’s collective security mechanisms.^[9] Today, many issues that used to fall under states’ internal affairs and that were thus shielded from international interventions lead to global involvement. Soysal (1994) coined the term postnational citizenship to emphasize that regimes beyond the nation state have significant influence over individual rights in nation states.^[10] Whereas national citizenship is not waning completely, the impact of global norms, treaties, institutions, and processes on what used to fall squarely under the purview of states is indicative of the slowly changing role of the nation state.

Many refugee scholars and practitioners have questioned whether the refugee definition in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol is still adequate to deal with today’s (let alone future) forms of displacement.^[11] In fact, only a fraction of the world’s 27 million refugees have so-called Convention Refugee status, and state actors and UN agencies use a variety of definitions.^[12] This includes the definition of Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); people in refugee-like situation, who “face protection risks similar to those of refugees, but for whom refugee status has, for practical or other reasons, not been ascertained;”^[13] as well as persons who fall under a regional definition, namely the 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and the nonbinding 1984 Cartagena Declaration for South America. Importantly, statistics also include those who are admitted for complementary, subsidiary, or temporary forms of protection.^[14]

Refugee advocates are reluctant to open up new negotiations of what it means to be a refugee, as they fear that, contrary to what is needed, newly-negotiated definitions and legal regimes may be less inclusive and provide fewer rights and safeguards or let countries insert exceptions and loopholes through which they can circumvent real obligations. This is the reason why the UN Global Compact on Refugees, which was adopted in 2018, is limited to expanding the implementation of refugee policies, without attempting to change the scope of refugee protections.^[15]

In the long run, though, I predict that the global community will adjust the legal definitions of those enjoying international protection. Accounting for the impact of climate disasters on displacement, advocates are rapidly enhancing our knowledge of the empirical links,^[16] as well as the legal clarity of concepts related to environmentally-induced displacement.^[17] Initiatives like the state-led Platform on Disaster Displacement are actively promoting policy and normative development to address the protection needs of displaced persons across borders in the context of disasters and climate change.^[18] An academic coalition around the Model International Mobility Convention (MIMC)^[19] has proposed an “International Convention on the Rights and Duties of All Persons Moving from One State to Another and of the States they Leave, Transit or Enter.”^[v] As Doyle explains, the MIMC “expands the grounds for asylum to include ‘forced migrants’ based on a ‘serious harm’ standard that goes beyond state-based persecution. For refugees and forced migrants, the MIMC provides equivalent rights; and it offers rights equivalent to nationals, rather than to aliens, without a waiting period.” Protection against serious harm includes generalized armed conflict and mass violations of human rights, as well as threats resulting from environmental disasters, enduring food insecurity, and acute climate or other events seriously disturbing public order.^[vi]

It is unlikely that hundreds of millions of climate migrants will force a change in normative concepts. Whereas climate advocates sometimes circulate exorbitant estimates, most models of climate mobility predict moderate international flows, while environmental factors will cause larger internal displacements and migrations.^[20] However, within the next 75 years, a combination of (a) higher visibility of climate change impacts, (b) the occurrence of different forms of climate mobility, (c) better analytical tools to measure, understand, and predict such movements, as well as (d) advances in our normative discussions will lead to more meaningful protections.

One area in which new political solutions will be forced on the global community relates to low-lying island states. We know for a fact that several small island states, such as Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and others will become uninhabitable.^[21] Before they will be submerged, rising sea-levels mean that a higher risk of flooding, typhoons, and salt-water contamination will make them unsuitable for food production, economic activity, and normal life. As entire nations need to abandon their state territories, the global community will be forced to rethink deeply-ingrained concepts of protection. This situation has already led the UN Human Rights Committee to accept, in principle, that the human right to life can prevent a country from sending a person back to harsh climatic conditions.^[vii] Individualized protections of this sort may not be adequate to deal with the larger ramifications of large-scale relocations of entire national communities, but they foreshadow changes in the normative framework governing environmentally-displaced persons and peoples. Apart from what relocating entire small island states’ populations means for the international protection regime, these movements also require us to rethink entrenched definitions of what it means to be a state and what it means to exercise sovereignty. In international law, a sovereign state is defined as having a permanent population, defined territory, one government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.^[22] But what happens if the territory goes amiss?^[23]

Many countries have treated migration as the last bastion of sovereignty.^[24] That means, while governments concede their limited means to effectively regulate international monetary flows, the global economy, and environmental phenomena, they performatively claim the right to decide who enters their territory and under what conditions. This has hampered the adoption and implementation of far-reaching human rights and global governance regimes. Leaving the UN Refugee Convention aside, the numerous existing treaties, such as the 1990 UN Migrant Worker Convention, and various ILO conventions on migration have not seen large-scale participation from major immigration countries or are limited in their rights and impacts. However, in the past 15 years, we have seen an increasing willingness to engage in the global governance of migration and mobility.^[25] Since the first High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development held at the UN General Assembly in 2006, several dialogues, summits, fora, and consultative processes have been organized under the auspices of the UN or led by governments. And since 2007, the state-led Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) annually debates migration policy between governments, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector.^[26]

The salience of global mobility discussions led to the substantive inclusion of explicitly migration-related targets within the Sustainable Development Goals that form the conceptual and operative bedrock of global development endeavors.^[27] A watershed movement for these processes was the 2015 so-called “summer of migration” that was triggered by Syrian refugees reaching the shores of Europe, which led to the 2016 UN Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants. The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants that resulted from this summit set the path for the discussion, elaboration, and adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees, which were adopted in 2018.^[28] Both are non-binding wish-lists of policies and protections. Although in practice both compacts are toothless instruments of soft law, they influence norm-creation and dissemination.^[29] Through national voluntary reviews, a quadrennial International Migration Review Forum and Global Refugee Forum, advocacy efforts by international organizations and local norm entrepreneurs—such as civil society organizations, municipal governments, or national political actors—the non-binding policy options in the Global Compacts are being forged into norms. Both compacts are still young, but policy-entrepreneurs at various levels push for creating incentives to hold states accountable to what the compacts spell out as good mobility governance. The outcome document of the first International Migration Review Forum in 2022 thus tasks the UN Secretary-General with proposing “a limited set of indicators … to assist Member States, upon their request, in conducting inclusive reviews of progress related to the implementation of the Global Compact.”^[30] It is hard to imagine that, over time, these processes will not solidify to create a binding global regime.

In addition to processes around the two Global Compacts, in the near future, states may increasingly recognize their obligations stemming from colonial interventions. Recent discussions about decolonizing international relations have highlighted the need to revisit states’ assertions that their decisions on whom to admit is entirely at their discretion. Applying a post-colonial lens, many states in the so-called Global North have certain obligations toward their former colonies and the Global South, which may include welcoming their nationals. Achiume (2019) thus links migration to a process of decolonization.^[31] States have thus far been reluctant to accept legally-binding responsibilities in this regard. However, the continuation of this discussion may lead to a greater salience of ethical arguments, which in turn may influence the power relations between sending and receiving countries.^[viii]

I have often been impatient with my home country, Germany, to overcome ethnic definitions of what it means to be German. Shedding the historical national identity of equating being German with being punctual, pork-eating, and white is a slow process that no doubt has not yet been completed.^[32] However, adopting a more long-term view, we see that it takes time for deeply rooted national identities to adapt. International migration leads to multi-racial and multi-cultural societies. Slowly but surely, it triggers societal processes that change nations’ self-understanding. It would be naïve not to expect temporal backlashes. But I predict that the normative power of multi-cultural societies will, over the course of two generations, lead to starkly different identifications, attitudes, discussions, and policies.

Power, Actors, and Levels of Governance

Beyond changing substantive norms, the future of migration governance will be influenced by a changing landscape of power, actors, and levels of governance. Today’s world is not only multipolar but, as Acharya (2018) emphasizes, it is “multiplex.”^[33] This means that it is characterized by both a multiplicity of actors involved in making the global order and a complexity of multidimensional and transboundary issues that require action beyond any single nation state. The global community is not fully dominated by one or two superpowers but by a growing network of global and regional powers. This trend is likely to intensify and will have important repercussions for the way global and regional norms are set. Regional and sub-regional processes are likely to increase in relevance.^[34] Various regional powers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are not only gaining more economic sway and political power in the international arena, they are also attracting increasing numbers of immigrants and refugees, while simultaneously engaging in active policies vis-à-vis their emigrant and diaspora populations.^[35] These different perspectives on immigration, emigration, transit migration, and displacement from around the world will influence international discussions and their political outcomes.

In the last decade, we have also seen a continuously increasing involvement of local authorities, not only in dealing with the practical aspects of emigration and immigration on the ground, but also in terms of becoming active participants in shaping the global discourse on international mobility. This is exemplified by the Mayoral Forum on Mobility, Migration and Development that has been meeting since 2014; the GFMD Mayors Mechanism that was established in 2018; and networks such as the Mayors Migration Council, Cities of Migration or the mobility-related work of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).^[36] For many local governments, human mobility is less politicized. On the frontlines of public policy delivery, in direct contact with immigrant populations and in need of the trust and cooperation of the local populace, local authorities tend to be more pragmatic, more inclusive, and more welcoming than their national counterparts. Local-level policies and activities are likely to lead to a bottom-up process of infusing national processes with policy proposals that are better suited to overcome the insecurities associated with international mobility.^[ix]

Today, state sovereignty the world over is much more limited than simplistic conceptualizations of authority assert. Besides limitations from international political processes and international law, as well as permeable political borders, open, interlinked economies are a key factor that limits national governments’ policy options.^[37] Global trade in goods and services; global production, value, and research chains; and international financial flows are likely to intensify in the future.^[38] This restricts what national governments can do unilaterally in many ways and will have three effects. First, since increased mobility is generally beneficial for economic processes, private sector actors are generally in favor of more liberal mobility regimes, thus influencing national policy debates. Second, economic interdependencies may lead to increased political awareness of the benefits of freer international mobility. Third, this creates incentives for states to act multilaterally. More extensive international cooperation on a host of economic issues will also affect human mobility regulation, and states will recognize that economic, legal, and moral imperatives will require them to cooperate bilaterally, regionally, or globally to make mobility safer and easier.

Demographic and Technological Change

The third set of factors that will put pressure on mobility regimes are related to demographic and technological change. Global and regional economies will be shaped by the fact that most advanced economies will see shrinking working-age population ratios. By the year 2100, global population growth is projected to have stopped, entering a period of long-term decline.^[39] This is illustrated in Figure 1, with sub-populations broken out by region.

Figure 1: Population estimates, 1950-2020, and projections with prediction intervals, 2020-2100, by world region

Source: UN Population Division (2021).

Note: Prediction intervals (shaded area around a projected trend) were derived from a probabilistic assessment of projection uncertainty. For a given year, the future trend is expected to lie within the predicted range with a probability of 95%.

An increasing number of people until 2100 means that global populations are predicted to be higher than today. Figure 2 shows significant differences by world region. Many advanced economies will also need to adapt to population aging. In Europe and Northern America, there were 30 older persons per 100 working age persons in 2019, a ratio that is projected to rise sharply, reaching 49 in 2050 (Figures 2 and 3). This may significantly increase the demand for immigration in countries with aging populations, including in certain emerging economies.

Figure 2: Estimated and projected old-age dependency ratios by region, 1990-2050

Source: Population Division (2019). *Excluding Australia and New Zealand.
 

Figure 3: Ten countries and areas with the highest old-age dependency ratio (65+/20-64), 2050

Source: UN Population Division (2019).

Apart from demographic changes, technology represents the biggest wild card for the future. The so-called 4th industrial revolution, with its use of artificial intelligence, industrial robots, and wide-spread automation, may lead to systemic changes in the world of work.^[40] This may lead to technological unemployment if we see “our discovery of the means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor.”^[41] Opposed to the demographic trend outlined above, the future iteration of “Work 4.0” may lead to a decreased demand for a large immigrant workforce in the manufacturing sector. Although the World Bank observes that thus far “technology has created more jobs than it has displaced,”^[42] it remains to be seen how large-scale changes in manufacturing will affect the demand for labor and specific skills in different locations.

Conclusion—The Long Arc of the Just Mobility Universe

De Haas (2012) observed that over time, the global migration debate tends to swing like a pendulum between optimism and pessimism.^[43] This essay, however, has outlined several factors that underpin my prediction that in the long-run, national, regional, and global policy processes will be better suited to overcome the insecurities associated with human mobility and harness mobility for sustainable development (or however we will label positive development in 2100).

Current events sometimes suggest that states are backsliding into restricting movement, securitizing migrants and refugees, and enhancing, rather than decreasing, the insecurities of those on the move. Examples for such tendencies are Australia’s policies to categorically disregard all asylum claims by those arriving by sea;^[44] Australia’s and the UK’s policies to send refugees to developing countries, where they can be warehoused more economically;^[45] instrumentalizing development aid (mostly to no avail) to immobilize those interested in migrating;^[46] and a host of activities by the European Union, the U.S., Australia, and other countries to keep de jure or de facto people from applying for asylum.^[47]

While we can expect to see the periodical adoption of such policies and activities, the general trend of the global and national discourses points in the opposite direction. We often need certain ruptures to bring about systemic change. The 2015 “summer of migration,” during which mostly Syrian refugees arrived in large numbers in neighboring countries and at the gates of the European Union, single-handedly led to the adoption of the Global Compacts for Migration and on Refugees three years later. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented border closures around the world,^[48] but at the same time it has promoted a push to systematically integrate human mobility into the health, economic, and social response to the virus.^[49]

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously remarked that the “arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”^[50] Our status quo bias makes it sometimes hard to see the broader trends. On the other hand, history often does not evolve in a linear fashion. Nothing in the future is predetermined, and many factors have to coalesce to yield the picture outlined here. Instead of the predicted scenario, it is also possible that state sovereignty will resolidify, governments will abandon multilateral and human-rights-based endeavors on mobility, and richer nations will shield themselves through higher and more militarized borders. In a slightly more utopian scenario, it is possible that Wimmer’s forecast of the end of the nation-state will come true, and the nation-state will start to unravel, with important repercussions for the governance of human mobility.^[51] For the predictions foreseen in this essay to become reality, it will require societies, polities, and leaders to change social norms and engage in collective learning and collective action around the human rights, as well as economic, social, and moral necessities of good policies, regulating and facilitating human mobility. It will require many policy entrepreneurs and broad-based support from social movements. I hope that in 2100, humankind will look back at today’s discussions and find that the seeds were planted and we were on the right path. Until then, it is our job to roll up our sleeves and advance the discourse, norms, and policies on human mobility that help to overcome insecurities.

[i] I am indebted to Michael W. Doyle and T. Alexander Aleinikoff for insightful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

[ii] Leaving aside questions of statehood of Palestine, Kosovo, Taiwan and other territories.

[iii] The seven core instruments, adopted between 1965 and 2006, are the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979); Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment and Punishment (1984); Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989); and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006).

[iv] In 1946, the International Refugee Organization was created to cater to the needs of “the last million” European refugees. In 1949, it was succeeded by the UNHCR.

[v] The International Mobility Commission—composed of academic and policy experts—debated and developed a model framework on mobility that establishes a framework of minimum rights afforded to all people who cross state borders as visitors and the special rights afforded to tourists, students, labor and economic migrants, family members, forced migrants, refugees, migrants caught in countries in crisis, and migrant victims of trafficking as a consequence of their status. See Michael W. Doyle, “The Model International Mobility Convention,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 56, no. 2 (2018): 219-237.

[vi] See Art. 125 of the MIMC.

[vii] However, in the case before the Committee, it decided that the threshold had not yet been reached for a person returning from New Zealand to Kiribati. See UN Human Rights Committee (2019).

[viii] In 2021, Germany officially recognized the Herero-Nama genocide during its colonial-era occupation of Namibia, at the start of the 20th century. Although Germany pledged to pay Namibia $1.3 billion, the government was adamant to avoid calling the payment “reparations.”

[ix] Sub-national authorities can equally adopt policies that are more nativist, hostile, and securitizing than national governments, as some states in the United States, such as Arizona, have shown (Jiménez et al. 2021). However, by-and-large, local and city governments tend to be more open, inclusive, and realistic about mobility issues (Thouez 2020).

[1] Daniel Naujoks, “Trends, Drivers and Dynamics of Flight and Migration,” in Forced Displacement and Migration: Approaches and Programmes of International Cooperation, ed. Hans-Joachim Preuß, Dirk Messner, and Christoph Beier (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2022), 19-40.

[2] Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, “International Refugee Law and Refugee Policy: The Case of Deterrence Policies,” Journal of Refugee Studies 27 no. 4 (2014): 574-595; David FitzGerald, Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); and Heaven Crawley, “The Politics of Refugee Protection in a (Post)COVID-19 World,” Social Sciences 10, no. 3 (2021): 81. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10030081.

[3] John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

[4] Andreas Wimmer, “Worlds without nation-states: Five scenarios for the very long term,” Nations and Nationalism, 2021, 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12690.

[5] Matti Minkkinen, “Theories in futures studies: Examining the theory base of the futures field in light of survey results,” World Futures Review 12, no. 1 (2020): 12–25; Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

[6] Eric A. Posner, The Twilight of Human Rights Law (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

[7] Natalie Samarsinghe, “Human Rights: Norms and Machinery,” in Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, 2nd ed., ed. Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

[8] Michael W. Doyle, “The Politics of Global Humanitarianism: R2P before and after Libya,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect, ed. Alex J. Bellamy and Tim Dunne (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018), 673–690.

[9] Gary Wilson, “The United Nations Security Council and Refugee Flows as ‘Threats to the Peace,’” in An Introduction to International Refugee Law, ed. M. Rafiqul Islam and Md. Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 267-289.

[10] Yasemin Soysal, The Limits of Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

[11] Jane McAdam, Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); The New Humanitarian, “Has the Refugee Convention outlived its usefulness?” March 26, 2012, www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2012/03/26/has-refugee-convention-outlived-its-usefulness; T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore, The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2019); Seyla Benhabib, “The End of the 1951 Refugee Convention? Dilemmas of Sovereignty, Territoriality, and Human Rights,” Jus Cogens 2 (2020): 75-100; Kemal Kirişci, “At 70, the 1951 Geneva Convention is under duress: The Global Compact on Refugees could help save lives and economies,” International Migration 59 no. 4 (2021): 253-256; and Daniel Naujoks, “International Treaties, Conventions, and Laws on Forcible Displacement,” in Integrative Social Work Practice with Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Forcibly Displaced Persons, ed. Nancy Murakami and Mashura Akilova (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2023), 45-67. See Chapter 2 in Guy S. Goodwin-Gill and Jane McAdam, The Refugee in International Law, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) for a longer discussion on legal refugee definitions.

[12] Naujoks, “International Treaties, Conventions, and Laws on Forcible Displacement.”

[13] UNHCR, “Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2019,” 2020, 64, https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf.

[14] UNHCR, “Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2019,” 2020, 67, https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf.

[15] T. Alexander Aleinikoff, “The Unfinished Work of the Global Compact on Refugees,” International Journal of Refugee Law 30, no. 4 (2018): 611–617; Liliana Lyra Jubilut and Melissa Martins Casagrande, “Shortcomings and/or Missed Opportunities of the Global Compacts for the Protection of Forced Migrants,” International Migration 57, no. 6 (2019): 139-157; and Nicholas R. Micinski, UN Global Compacts Governing Migrants and Refugees (London: Routledge, 2021).

[16] Robert McLeman and François Gemenne, eds., Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration (London: Routledge, 2018); and Alexander de Sherbinin, “Climate Impacts as Drivers of Migration,” Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, October 23, 2020, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/climate-impacts-drivers-migration.

[17] McAdam, Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law; and Joanna Apap, “The Concept of ‘Climate Refugee’: Towards a Possible Definition,” European Parliamentary Research Service, February 2019, www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2018/621893/EPRS_BRI(2018)621893_EN.pdf.

[18] Platform on Disaster Displacement, “Platform on Disaster Displacement, follow-up to the Nansen Initiative: addressing the protection needs of persons displaced across borders in the context of disasters and climate change,” in Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration, ed. Robert McLeman and François Gemenne (London: Routledge, 2018), 421-425.

[19] Model International Mobility Convention (MIMC), “International Convention on the Rights and Duties of All Persons Moving from One State to Another and of the States They Leave, Transit or Enter, 2017,” http://globalpolicy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/mimc_document.pdf.

[20] de Sherbinin, “Climate Impacts as Drivers of Migration;” Viviane Clement, Kanta Kumari Rigaud, Alex de Sherbinin, Bryan Jones, Susana Adamo, Jacob Schewe, Nian Sadiq, and Elham Shabahat, Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021).

[21] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, ed. H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, and N.M. Weyer (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

[22] Anders Henriksen, International Law, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 66.

[23] Michael Gerrard and Gregory E. Wannier, eds., Threatened Island Nations: Legal Implications of Rising Seas and a Changing Climate (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Riad Meddeb and Daniel Naujoks, “Disappearing Islands: What happens to their nations and people?” Medium, November 3, 2018, https://medium.com/@riad.meddeb/disappearing-islands-what-happens-to-their-nations-andpeople-f318c374188; and Kamal Amakrane, “Sinking out of sight,” The World Today, February & March 2021, https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/91969/page/27.

[24] Catherine Dauvergne, Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means for Migration and Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

[25] Elaine Lebon-McGregor, “A History of Global Migration Governance: Challenging Linearity,” IMI Working Paper 167 (Oxford: International Migration Institute, 2020); and Daniel Naujoks, “Multilateralism for Mobility: Interagency Cooperation in a Post-pandemic World,” in Human Mobility and Pandemic: Understanding the Pandemic and Human Mobility, ed. Ibrahim Sirkeci and Jeffrey H. Cohen (London: Transnational Press, 2020), 183-193.

[26] Stefan Rother, “The Global Forum on Migration and Development as a venue of state socialisation: A stepping stone for multi-level migration governance?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45, no. 8 (2019): 1258-1274.

[27] Nicola Piper, “Migration and the SDGs,” Global Social Policy 17, no. 2 (2017): 231–238; and Daniel Naujoks, “Achieving the Migration-Related Sustainable Development Goals,” in 2017 Situation Report on International Migration: Migration in the Arab Region and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, United Nations and International Organization for Migration (Beirut: UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, 2018), 73-122.

[28] Elizabeth Ferris and Susan F. Martin, “The Global Compacts on Refugees and for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: Introduction to the Special Issue,” International Migration 57, no. 6 (2019): 5-18.

[29] Alexander Betts, “The Global Compact on Refugees: Towards a theory of change?” International Journal of Refugee Law 30, no. 4 (2018): 623-626; and Micinski, UN Global Compacts Governing Migrants and Refugees.

[30] United Nations, “Progress Declaration of the International Migration Review Forum,” UN-Doc No: A/AC.293/2022/L.1, 2022.

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[32] Bart Bonikowski, “Nationhood as cultural repertoire: Collective identities and political attitudes in France and Germany,” in Everyday Nationhood, ed. by Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 147–174.

[33] Amitav Acharya, “Multilateralism and the Changing World Order,” in Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, 2nd ed., ed. Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 781-796.

[34] Lorenzo Fioramonti, ed., Regionalism in a Changing World. Comparative Perspectives in the New Global Order (London: Routledge, 2013); and Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

[35] Heaven Crawley, Faisal Garba, and Francis Nyamnjoh, “Migration and (In)Equality in the Global South: Intersections, Contestations and Possibilities,” Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies 5, no. 1/2 (2022): 1-13.

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[38] Åsa Johansson and Eduardo Olaberría, Global Trade and Specialisation Patterns over the next 50 years (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2014), www.oecd.org/economy/Trade-and-specialisation-patterns-for-the-next-fifty-years.pdf.

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[40] Andrew Chakhoyan, “The jobless world and its discontents,” World Economic Forum, January 2017, www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/jobless-world-and-its-discontents/.

[41] Michael A. Peters, “Beyond technological unemployment: the future of work,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 52, no. 5 (2020): 485-491.

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[44] FitzGerald, Refuge Beyond Reach.

[45] Madeline Gleeson, “Australia’s asylum policy has been a disaster. It’s deeply disturbing the UK wants to adopt it,” The Conversation, December 7, 2021, https://theconversation.com/australias-asylum-policy-has-been-a-disaster-its-deeply-disturbing-the-uk-wants-to-adopt-it-172141.

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[47] FitzGerald, Refuge Beyond Reach.

[48] Mary A. Shiraef, Cora Hirst, Mark A. Weiss, Sarah Naseer, Nikolas Lazar, Elizabeth Beling, Erin Straight, Lukas Feddern, Noah Rusk Taylor, Cayleigh Jackson, William Yu, Aadya Bhaskaran, Layth Mattar, Matthew Amme, Maggie Shum, Mary Louise Mitsdarffer, Johanna Sweere, Susanna E. Brantley, Luis L. Schenoni, Colin Lewis-Beck & COBAP Team, “COVID Border Accountability Project: a hand-coded global database of border closures introduced during 2020,” Scientific Data 8, no. 253 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01031-5.

[49] Naujoks, “Multilateralism for Mobility.”

[50] Martin Luther King, Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” speech given at the National Cathedral, March 31, 1968.

[51] Wimmer, “Worlds without nation-states.”