The Global Migration Regime

the iom's role in the global migration regime

18.Aug.02 - The ‘Ghostbusters’ are haunting the world; they are in search for refugees, migrants and other new-time nomads. They carefully distinguish between useful professions, much needed cheap workers and ‘surplus people’. Autonomous migration, irregular border crossing, ‘sans papiers’ and their support networks are declared public enemies. Numerous national and transnational paratroopers and migration agencies are set up to fight them. On the other hand, brain drain of medical staff, IT-experts, as well as manpower-drain of young men and women for construction sites, service work and the sex industry is favoured. For some 15 years a global migration regime is emerging and aims to introduce schemes of ‘migration management’: No laissez-faire, no autonomy but rational selection of the useful and the unwanted. That corresponds with the global management of finances and trade by GATT, WTO and IMF. Whilst those agencies promote the unlimited flow of goods and money, another set of agencies aim to manage, to control and restrict the free movement of people. These are namely the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Inter-Governmental Consultations on Migration (IGC), and the International Organisation for Labour. The most advanced system has been implemented by the European Union’s agencies and task forces, such as the Ad Hoc Group Migration, the Strategic Committee on Migration, and the clearing centres on asylum and on migration. Even a draft for a General Agreement on the Movement of People (GAMP) is discussed in the public domain. Such instruments represent the technology of power and oppression against the free movement of people. It is high time to reveal their true inhuman nature, to bring to public their cruel economic ideologies, to criticise the underlying racism and to promote concerted actions in the name of equality and justice.