Oelgemöller-Allinson2020_Article_TheResponsibleMigrantReadingTh.pdf (660.16 kB)
The responsible migrant, reading the global compact on migration
journal contribution
posted on 2020-02-20, 11:31 authored by Christina OelgemöllerChristina Oelgemöller, Kathryn Lucy AllinsonIn 2016, the international community, in reaction to the growing number of ‘tragedies’ occurring as people attempted to move across borders, met to discuss large movements of refugees and migrants. The outcome of this meeting was an agreement to negotiate two Global Compacts, one on refugees and one on migrants, with the aim of facilitating ‘orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people’. This article explores how responsibility in the Global Compact on Migrant is expressive of a changed way of ‘doing’ migration. The language of ‘responsibility’ raises questions about how the international community views international migration and, by extension, prepares the ground for policy and practice on international migration. Taking a genealogical, jurisprudential approach, we follow the logic which brings migration, development and human rights language together to construct a new subjectivity: that of the ‘responsible’ migrant. The migrant human will be a rights-bearer because they will contribute to development in particular gendered ways. We argue that assuming a narrow understanding of responsibility misses expressive dynamics in the normalizing of international migration within a new framing to inform international law making.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
Law and CritiqueVolume
31Pages
183–207Publisher
Springer (part of Springer Nature)Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Acceptance date
2020-02-18Publication date
2020-04-24Copyright date
2020ISSN
0957-8536eISSN
1572-8617Publisher version
Language
- en