Migration management for the benefit of whom? Interrogating the work of the International Organization for Migration

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the nation-state and migration through the activities of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM operates at the intersection of nation-states, international human rights regimes, and neo-liberal governance. We find that the IOM enforces the exclusions of asylum seekers and maintains the central role of nation-states in ordering global flows of migration. In addition, we argue that the IOM acts on behalf of nation-states by using the language of international human rights, as though working in the interests of migrants and refugees. In providing a geographic appraisal of the IOM alongside its image and presentation with an analysis of its activities on voluntary returns, we address the new spaces of 'networked' governance that control and order migratory flows in the interests of nation-states.So we have two lines, then. Along the first the state is reterritorialized as a particular place, a territory with an inside and an outside. Along the second its border controls are dispersed and laid over other states, intergovernmental organizations, private agents like airlines, and mobile task forces. In the space between these two lines we find something new.

Offloading Migration Management: The Institutionalized Authority of Non-State Agencies over the Guatemalan Temporary Agricultural Worker to Canada Project

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“…7 Por eso, los paradigmas de humanitarización y securitización no son opuestos ni contradictorios entre sí, algo que han advertido numerosos autores, aunque medios y políticos continúen presentándolos como tales. 8 La humanitarización y la securitización de las fronteras no son sólo compatibles sino también complementarias, pues ambas se basan en la producción de los migrantes ilegalizados como nuda vida y remiten, en última instancia, a una biologización, deshistorización y despolitización de los procesos migratorios.…”

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“…De 2003 à 2010, eu égard au Volet agricole du PTET, l'Organisation internationale des migrations (OIM) est intervenue à titre d'intermédiaire de recrutement. En effet, FERME contractait avec l'OIM afin que cet organisme procède à la sélection et à l'appariement de travailleurs pour le compte d'employeurs opérant au Québec (Valazero, 2015;Ashutosh et Mountz, 2011). C'est d'ailleurs l'OIM qui amorça, en collaboration avec FERME, en 2003, la structuration du cadre procédural entourant le recrutement de travailleurs guatémaltèques.…”