Does the forced/voluntary dichotomy really influence migration governance?

Hélène Thiollet (1) , Ferruccio Pastore (2) , Camille Schmoll (3)

1 CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS)
2 FIERI - Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull'Immigrazione
3 GC (UMR_8504) - Géographie-cités

In the first part of the chapter, we review the main historical stages and turning points in the use of the forced/voluntary dyad in the global governance of mobility. We approach the development of the international refugee regime and its connection to migration politics critically across space and time. We look at the emergence of a global forced migration regime and, in particular, the category of forced migration as a regulatory tool, examining its status as a category arising from specific circumstances and systematically enmeshed with ad hoc migration management tools. In the second part, we focus on more recent developments, and the ways in which contemporary global governance of migration has contributed to the proliferation of new categories of management and interpretation which reflect the increasing importance of forced migration but have nevertheless further blurred these distinctions. In the third part, we focus on Western democracies and the way in which, in recent decades, governance of both forced and non-forced migration has worked together to produce forced mobility and migrant immobilization. These recent policy developments in Europe and beyond reflect an increasingly clear change in the global governance of mobility. Forcedness is no longer, or no longer simply, the condition under which people leave, or the result of pressures encountered during the journey. It characterises the policy objectives of most destination states, as well as a number of other governments which have partnered with them to contain mobility globally (Landau 2019). These bodies increasingly use coercion to immobilise or displace people, and as a result governments and international organizations contribute, de facto, to the blurring of the already fragile distinction between forced and voluntary mobility.

Mots clés: forced/voluntary migration; global governance of mobility; Western democracies

Domaines: Science politique

Hélène Thiollet, Ferruccio Pastore, Camille Schmoll. Does the forced/voluntary dichotomy really influence migration governance?. Ettore Recchi and Mirna Safi (Eds). Handbook of Human Mobilities and Migrations, Edward Elgar Publishing, 29 p., In press. ⟨hal-03847217⟩