Description
Koinova Maria
The Global Compact on Migration established standards for migration governance in 2018, yet international organizations are increasingly challenged to deal with emerging global issues requiring immediate solutions, such as climate change, systemic economic crises, and large-scale migration. As a result a gap widens between intentions for global cooperation especially through multilateralism, and how governance is actually conducted in practice. Such gap is especially visible in the field of transit migration. It is largely a regional phenomenon, yet our understanding of the mechanisms and processes of its regional governance is still minimal. This article sheds light comparatively on major trends in the governance of transit migration in two regions – the Balkans and the Middle East – affected by the refugee movements from the war in Syria since 2012 and the conflict neighborhood of the Middle East and North Africa. Using a relational approach to polycentric governance, I argue that interactions among governmental, non-governmental, supranational and non-state actors, as well as sending and destination states form configurations of partially formal, partially informal relationships that de facto govern transit migration in a particular region. These configurations are underpinned by mechanisms of cooperation, conditionality, containment, contestation, attraction, and coercion, and are regionally specific. Socio-spatially embedded in areas with different political regimes and statehood capacities, such mixtures of formal and informal relational dynamics form the regional architectures of transit migration governance
