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111 AJIL Unbound 1 (2017-2018)

handle is hein.journals/ajilunbo111 and id is 1 raw text is: doi:10.1017 /aju.2017.14 INTRODUCTION TO SYMPOSIUM ON FRAMING GLOBAL MIGRATION LAW Jaya Ramji-Nogales* and Peterfj Spirot In our modern world, migrants are both highly visible and deeply invisible, from those undertaking dangerous voyages in overcrowded boats who dominate contemporary headlines, to those who toil unseen in farms, restau- rants, and construction sites. What is the role of international law in governing their movement? The answer is that international law has surprisingly little to say about the transborder movement of people. The principle of non-refoulement offers the most robust governance site, but its scope is quite limited with respect to who falls within its parameters and the access and process to which they are entitled. Other areas of international law that appear relevant, such as international trade law, international labor law, and the law of the sea similarly present little by way of migration governance. As a result, there are massive flows of human beings whose travel is barely reg- ulated, let alone coordinated, by international law. These essays are the first part of a three-part symposium responding to this gap in the law, starting from the premise that international migration law needs to be radically redesigned. To that end, the essays engage with the idea of a new scholarly field of inquiry: global migration law. We begin with the following definition created at a November 2016 experts' workshop hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center: Scholars of global migration law seek to understand the relationship between transnational human mobility and all levels of the law. The field of global migration law explores transnational move- ment of people defined broadly. It covers a broad temporal scope, from causal factors and motivations for migration to exit, transit, entry, reception, and integration. Global migration law questions the constraints and shortcomings of the primary contemporary governance structure, international refugee law, and seeks to explore the legal space beyond that regime. The field identifies current structures as historically contin- gent artifacts of a sovereignty-based global system in need of reform. It begins from a migrant-centered perspective, understanding the migrant as a multidimensional human being with a complex set of needs, interests, and contributions. The field focuses on cross-border migration, examining domestic movement of people only as it relates to transnational movement. The term mobility implicates human capability as distinct from movement. It also pushes back against the assumption that migration is the optimal solution to the situations faced by potential migrants, underscoring the field's relationship with development and global socioeconomic structures. Global migration law includes all levels of the law: international, regional, bilateral, transnational, national, and subnational, state and non-state, as well as law's impact in its gaps and absences. Because the relevant international law is fragmented and relatively thin, the field is best approached as a legal ecosystem. Global migration law also examines the mechanisms through which law is made and implemented on the ground. The field is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on empirical and qualitative social sciences, and emphasizes the importance of perspectives and research from immi- grant source-states and the global South. * I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. t Charles R Weiner Professor of Law at Temple Universig Beasley School of Law. The American Society of International Law and Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Peter Spiro O 2017. This is an Open Access article, 1 distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/1icenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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