Waseda Institute of Aisan Migrations & The Global Asia Research Center
"Removing walls and fences in the 21st century.
Towards a new paradigm of borders, free movement, and people?"
The Global Asia Research Center, together with Institute of Asian Migrations, will be holding a seminar by Professor Diego Acosta (University of Bristol) discussing free movement regimes at the global level and a potentially new paradigm of borders.
Date and venue:
November 11 (Friday), 14:00-15:30 JST
Hybrid: In-person at Waseda University and Online via Zoom
Room 712, Building 19, Waseda Campus, Waseda University
Speaker:
Dr Diego Acosta is a Professor of European and Migration Law at the University of Bristol. He is a leading expert on migration and nationality law and has published numerous outputs primarily on Europe and Latin America. His new research project investigates free movement of people regimes at the global level. Professor Acosta has advised numerous international organizations, governments, parliaments, law firms, and NGOs in Europe, the USA, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, including the European Union, IOM, the Organization of American States, the Interamerican Bank on Development, UNASUR, or IGAD in East Africa.
Abstract:
Adopted by 152 countries at the UN General Assembly in December 2018, the Global Compact on Migration (GCM) aims at achieving ‘safe, orderly, and regular migration along the migration cycle’ through a number of commitments enshrined under 23 objectives. As highlighted by various commentators, the GCM primarily intends to facilitate mobility. Against this background, objective 5 is, arguably, the most important. States commit to enhancing, diversifying, and expanding the ‘availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration’. Doing that should facilitate ‘labour mobility and decent work’, while at the same time upholding ‘the right to family life’ and responding ‘to the needs of migrants in a situation of vulnerability’. To realize such ambitious commitment, objective 5 proposes the adoption of international and bilateral cooperation arrangements and offers three examples of what they could include: visa liberalization, labour mobility cooperation frameworks, and free movement regimes. While free movement regimes emerge as the most comprehensive and expansive of such arrangements, they are not defined in the Compact and few scholars have paid attention to them. This talk attempts to identify, define and categorize free movement regimes at the global level and to distinguish them from other agreements facilitating mobility.