Migration governance in practice: critically addressing the ‘implementation gap’

Abstract

How does migration governance unfold in practice? A wide branch of the relevant literature stresses that migration policies often fail in practice (Andersson 2016; Castles 2004; Cornelius, Martin, and Hollifield 2007; Lavenex 2018). These approaches usually highlight the gaps between policies and outcomes (Geddes 2021) and they overwhelmingly focus on OECD countries. There are some insights into the ‘gap’ between ‘liberal’ or ‘open’ policies and more restrictive implementation in Global South regions, such as South America (Acosta and Freier 2015; Margheritis 2017; Finn, Doña-Reveco, and Feddersen 2019). However, studies on the implementation of migration laws and policies in Global South countries remain in their infancy. This panel aims to critically address and problematise the ‘gap’ between legal norms and implementation, with a special focus on Global South countries. This will address the following topics and questions: - How can we critically address, conceptualise and theorise the ‘implementation gap’? What are the different dimensions that are included within this gap? - What new lessons can we learn from studying migration law and policy implementation in Global South countries? In what ways do they challenge or confirm theories and concepts from the Global North? - How can we identify the implementing actors, to unpack the black box of power? What is the relationship between the actors who discuss, propose, formulate and implement migration policies? - What aspects of Global South settings create different incentives to (not) implement migration laws or policies? (e.g., in contexts of relative poverty, inequality, corruption, low transparency, political instability, strong Executives, etc.) - In practical terms, how can we avoid the OECD bias in migration studies?

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