Blog post
Publication details
Too many migrants, or too many concepts?
in: RLI Blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration
Year: 2017
Link to the blog post: https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/04/03/too-many-migrants-or-too-many-concepts/#more-146
Author(s) details
Publication description
Content available online here:
https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/04/03/too-many-migrants-or-too-many-concepts/#more-146
https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/04/03/too-many-migrants-or-too-many-concepts/#more-146
Keywords:
Displacement
Displacement
Abstract:
"A good six months after the adoption of the New York Declaration, the agencies in charge of drafting and promoting the Global Compacts on refugees and migrants – UNHCR and IOM, respectively – seem to be struggling to define the legal nature and the scope of these instruments. This makes it difficult for scholars and technical experts – whatever their discipline may be – to offer constructive suggestions. Here, as in all high-level political initiatives on ‘global’ issues – climate change springs to mind – there exists a serious risk of conceptual dispersion: international migration being a multi-dimensional phenomenon, there is almost no limit to the number of peripheral issues and vested interests capable of jumping, so to speak, on the bandwagon."
"A good six months after the adoption of the New York Declaration, the agencies in charge of drafting and promoting the Global Compacts on refugees and migrants – UNHCR and IOM, respectively – seem to be struggling to define the legal nature and the scope of these instruments. This makes it difficult for scholars and technical experts – whatever their discipline may be – to offer constructive suggestions. Here, as in all high-level political initiatives on ‘global’ issues – climate change springs to mind – there exists a serious risk of conceptual dispersion: international migration being a multi-dimensional phenomenon, there is almost no limit to the number of peripheral issues and vested interests capable of jumping, so to speak, on the bandwagon."