Global Governance and International Migration: A Bridge Too Far?

Countries do not look to the use of multilateral governance instruments to manage migration on a global level. Irregular migration remains a significant issue, and improvements to the conditions faced by migrants remains mostly ad-hoc and anecdotal. As a whole, states have been unwilling to integrate migration policy globally for a variety of reasons, ranging from not wanting to affect the competitiveness of its citizens seeking work abroad to concerns about empowering multilateral institutions and the impact on sovereignty and national-level policy development. This paper will analyze migration policies from the angle of domestic and global governance. The objective of this article is twofold. The first is to explain why bilateral agreements remain by far the most popular way to manage labor migration between countries and how this effectively diminishes the bargaining power of the labor sending country. The second is to understand the different supranational, national, and subnational structures and the critical role they have in advocacy, policy development, and enforcement. Each forum has different strengths and weaknesses and is used to bolster or isolate the advocacy positions of respective states, all of which make decisions based on protection requirements of citizens and domestic politics but also on the need to remain competitive in the global marketplace. With a focus on Asia, this chapter reviews current existing global and regional governance structures that address international migration. Based on