UN Global Compacts: Governing Migrants and Refugees: Dr. Nicholas R. Micinski
Channel: UNU MERIT
Date: 2021-07-15

This talk will explore the key findings from my recent book, UN Global Compacts: Governing Migrants and Refugees (Routledge, 2021), in which I present a comprehensive analysis of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, the Global Compact on Refugees, and the Global Compact for Migration. The declaration and compacts were significant achievements in global governance because, first, they put migration and displacement on the global agenda; second, they introduced new framings of concepts; and, third, they established the architecture for future global migration governance. The book places the declaration and compacts within their historical context, traces the evolution of global migration governance, and evaluates the implementation of the compacts. Ultimately, the global compacts were the result of three wider shifts in global governance from hard to soft law, from rights to aid, and from Cold War politics to nationalism. The book is based on three years of fieldwork, legal analysis, and interviews with diplomats and senior UN and EU officials.


About the speaker

Nicholas R. Micinski is the Libra Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Maine. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval, ISA James N. Rosenau Postdoctoral Fellow, and visiting researcher at the Center for the Study of Europe, Boston University. His research focuses on migration and refugee policy, development, human rights, climate migration, and global governance. He is the author of two books: UN Global Compacts: Governing Migrants and Refugees (Routledge 2021) and Delegating Responsibility: International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union (University of Michigan Press 2022).