Reimagining transnational mobility regulations: An anti-imperialist and utopian reading of the Model International Mobility Convention

In this article I rethink international migration law by analysing the Model International Mobility Convention (MIMC) through a concrete-utopian lens. Starting from the premise that coloniality remains an active structure of the global order, I show how progressive legal projects often reproduce the hierarchies they seek to overcome. Combining Gary Wilder’s concrete utopianism with Ruth Levitas’s utopia as method, I examine how MIMC’s provisions on residency, differentiated rights and representation both open and limit possibilities for post-sovereign mobility governance. I argue that the Model’s transformative potential depends on integrating decolonial and explicitly anti-imperialist perspectives that centre migrant experience and confront the material and historical inequalities structuring the contemporary border order. By situating mobility regulation within debates on labour precarity, the article highlights implications for collective organisation and transnational labour rights.