European Regionalism and Migration Global Governance

This article assesses the role of regionalism in global migration governance, focusing on the European case and European policies in other regions. This analysis finds the key factors that underlay the creation of a regional liberal migration regime in Europe in the 1950s. It moves on to describe how the European Community came, from the early 1970s to the early 1990s, to encourage regionalism elsewhere in the world, as a specific form of migration governance. This study compares the factors that allowed for a liberal migration regime in Europe and the configurations where the Europeans have promoted regionalism elsewhere in the world. The article concludes that the Europeans’ promotion of regionalism contradicts the criteria for success that derive from their experience. The main prescription of this study is that states should organise migratory regionalism around poles of economic growth. Regionalism cannot form a comprehensive instrument for global migration governance, as it would leave unsolved the predicament in Africa.