The Changing Policies of International Institutions: Human Mobility in the Mediterranean

The transition from a liberal international system to an alternative political world order makes state coalitions increasingly vulnerable. The transition also affects international institutions and international policy-making processes as well. Some international actors are becoming politically irrelevant, while other political actors are acquiring a more central role in the world political system. This chapter studies the transition in political order and its effects on the roles and policies of international institutions in a crucial sector: migration. The development of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), the criminalization and securitization of Mediterranean migration flows, are all evidence of this transition. Such changes reveal that while mass movements remain a salient issue, world policies concerning human mobility and asylum are also influenced by the contemporary phase of the world order transition. The protection of people on the move, an already highly contentious issue, seems not a likely expected principle of the rising post-liberal world order. The chapter explores how the changing policies of international institutions in managing human mobility in the Mediterranean are affected—beyond the challenges coming from the Global South migration governance, by the contemporary changes in the broader global political order.