Migration

Traditionally, the world of international cooperation has been split in a binary, where refugee responses and the creation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were situated in the humanitarian action field, with the consequence that help provided to refugees was reduced to specific situations of short-term displacement, assuming that the initial situation would eventually resolve and refugees would be able to go back to their countries of origin. For many crises, however, this has not been the case, given their complexity and scale. These ‘protracted’ crises, despite the language of urgency, have been at the centre of the humanitarian stage for decades. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the longest protracted situation are the more than 2.4 million Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan, but the situation of Syrian, South Sudanese, Somalis, Sudanese, Congolese or Eritrean refugees also qualifies as ‘protracted’, according to the definition that the UNHCR has been employing since 2004. The evidence of this long-term persistence of crises has been the search for durable solutions, which have been traditionally three: resettlement in another country, voluntary repatriation to the countries of origin and local integration. Yet, these solutions have not been curated by refugees themselves, but rather from the interests of the so-called ‘developed’ nations or the Global North, who have established the policies of the UNHCR through its governing body, the Executive Committee (ExCom).

It has been 25 years since Sen’s seminal book “Development as Freedom” was published. A lot has changed since then, also in terms of how we tend to perceive the relationship between migration and development. For one, and to paraphrase Sen, migrants have begun to be perceived as “responsible persons” who “chose to act one way rather than other”. To migrate, or to stay. This reasoning is reflected in the recent work of, among others, Hein de Haas (2021) and Kerilyn Schewel (2020), who perceive migration – or lack thereof – as a result of people’s aspirations both in terms of their right to move (de Haas) and to stay (Schewel). Importantly, as argued by the latter, a systematic neglect of the causes and consequences of immobility – i.e. of people’s staying preferences – obscures any efforts to understand why, when, and how people migrate. By developing the aspirations-capabilities frameworks to explore the determinants of (im)mobility, de Haas and Schewel have contributed a great deal to altering the status quo in migration research, which has often focused on the more easily quantifiable, economic factors underlying migration decision-making. Importantly, unlike most mainstream theories of migration, the aspirations-capabilities framework becomes even more relevant when acknowledging the highly gendered nature of migration.

The symposium brings together four contributions by four distinguished authors. The contributions articulate both the potential and pitfalls of the aspirations/capabilities model of the nexus and highlight particularities when the framing is applied together with other layers (gender, climate crisis, refugees). Two of the contributions discuss their topic using the term “migration” while others look into the issue in the context of “refugees.” Notwithstanding the importance of the distinction between “migrants” and “refugees” in current global frameworks, the purpose here is to stimulate debate that goes beyond this fluid dichotomy. In popular parlance, the term “refugees” is used to connote “migrants” or “non-citizens” in general.

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.

Olakpe's scholarly contribution is a thought-provoking addition to the discourse on South-South migration. Through an in-depth conceptual and methodological analysis of the law from below and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), Olakpe unveils the intricate layers of migration dynamics. Departing from the conventional south-north migration paradigm, this book unpacks the nuances of south-south migration through a critical and transformative lens, reorienting the dialogue towards the subtleties that characterize this unique migration pattern. At the heart of Olakpe's approach lies her innovative utilization of case studies and legal ethnographies in Nigeria and China. These studies serve as a lens through which she illuminates the experiences of marginalized subaltern communities, offering a critique of international law's role within the context of South-South migrations.

Both the proponents and critics of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) have called for a closer examination of the state of affairs in Third World countries, as opposed to the sole focus of examining the impact of colonialism and Western action, to explain and understand the impact of international law on these countries. The aim for such a call, mainly of the critics, appears to be the need to highlight the role of actors within the Third World in the existing socio-economic and political conditions and the problems in these countries. While conceding the share of responsibility of Third World leadership for the ongoing cycle of problems faced by Third World people, the call of TWAIL scholars primarily focuses on the grander objective of elevating Third World voices, narratives, and discourse into a meaningful mainstream position. Oreva Olakpe’s book makes a great contribution in this respect. It methodically examines the understanding of international law and its impact on the everyday lives of people in the Global South. It does so by solely relying on sources of knowledge in the Global South. The book makes a crucial epistemological intervention that seriously questions the status quo of knowledge production in international law, which heavily relies on the laws, policies, and experiences of the Global North, and asserts the vitality of shifting to the laws, policies, and experiences of the Global South to generate knowledge

Opening with the impact of untold narratives, Oreva Olakpe’s book, South-South Migrations, and the Law from Below, analyses South-South migrants in international law through a TWAIL lens. It considers ‘stories of building community, finding justice outside the protections of the state, and of their struggles against discrimination and exclusion within a state that does not recognize international migrant and refugee protections.’ (2) It weaves the experiences of undocumented migrants in the spaces that they are occupying while situating the impact of their experiences in international legal work. The book intentionally centers on undocumented communities as subjects of international law to map how they interact, shape, and resist in their own spaces. Doing so, the book critiques dominant literature that treats the Global South as objects of international law. The book attests to the agencies of undocumented migrants.

International legal scholarship on migration remains obsessively focused on migration from the global north to the global south. Even knowledge production anchored in critical traditions within international law, such as Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), tends to skew in the direction of analysis that centers Third World encounters with the First. This general orientation comes at the costly expense of a deeper understanding of what Oreva Olakpe terms “South-South migrations” in her powerful intervention addressing this glaring shortcoming in the literature. Neglect of detailed study of experiences of international law in the global south, and in South-South relations, results in more than a merely incomplete picture of the nature of international law.

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.