Strategic Non-Regulation as Migration Governance

How do states use strategic non-regulation in migration governance? Over the last decade, a wealth of critical migration scholarship has emerged on the ways in which forms of inaction – theorized as standoffishness or necropolitics – and forms of ambivalent action – conceptualized as uncertainty, indifference, ambiguity or informality – have characterized how states govern migration. However, this literature has remained relatively fragmented and scattered across geographical regions, disciplines, and units of analysis. To consolidate insights on the uses and misuses of inaction and ambivalence in migration governance, and to advance theory-building, this paper takes stock of the complementarities and tensions between the various conceptualizations of strategic non-regulation. Our paper combines a systematic literature review with original empirical material collected via in-person interviews and participant observation with government officials, high-level civil servants, UN representatives, NGO directors and employees, as well as individual refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2012 and 2017. By putting our own empirical work on the Middle East and North Africa region in dialogue with research on the variegated manifestations of strategic non-regulation of migration observed and theorized in other geographies, both across the Global South and North, we seek to advance three central debates on the political functionality of policy failure and implementation gaps, the interplay between state capacity and political will, and questions of agency and intentionality in non-regulation. Ultimately, our paper seeks to offers suggestions for a concerted research agenda on the drivers, dynamics and effects of strategic non-regulation in migration governance.