Global governance, economic migration and the difficulties of social activism

There has been a gradual shift towards greater global governance of labour migration, a development paralleled by the mushrooming of migrant and civil society associations concerned to uphold a rights-based approach to migration. Yet the emergent global governance structures offer few opportunities for advocacy by migrant and civil society organizations. This article explores the reasons why social activism by or on behalf of economic migrants remains difficult. The article focuses in particular on the obstacles in the way of access to global institutions and to migrant voice, the complexity and ambiguity of the increasingly multi-sited governance structure and the difficulties of placing rights at its centre, all of which mean that formal mechanisms of global governance with regard to migration remain exclusionary and migrant activism part of the critical resistance to contemporary globalization rather than an insider element of governance.