In the age of migration, a large number and various types of people move across borders. Since the 1990s at the earliest, political scientists and scholars of international relations have begun to focus on migration. Migration is a relatively new issue in the academic field of international relations. However, economic migrants and refugees are currently among the hottest issues of global politics. They are regarded as among the non-traditional security threats. The need for control, management, and governance of migration has been recognized more than ever, due to excessive flow of people and the changing global political environment caused by terror attacks.

This special issue aims to analyze how migration has been managed or governed globally and how economic migrants and refugees are treated as a “problem” or a security issue. The three main discussion points are as follows: global multilayered migration governance, reconsideration of the existing migration and refugee regimes, and securitization of migrants and refugees.

Sovereign states remain the primary actors for controlling and managing migration. Sending, receiving, and transit countries insist on their own interests respectively. However, several other actors, for example, international organizations, regional organizations, and NGOs, are also involved with managing migration. As the existing studies already pointed out, these actors cooperate bilaterally and multilaterally at plural regional and global levels.

In this special issue, the current architecture and dynamics of global multilayered migration governance of European and African, Asian, and Oceanian cases are analyzed based on the area studies. The limits and prospects of the existing international refugee regime are also examined from the perspective of both international laws and international relations. As the premise for the orientation towards managing or governing migration, securitization of economic migrants and refugees is noted in several articles. Whether securitization really contributes to the guarantee of security is also questioned.

Global migration governance is often examined from the perspective of above. However, for whom is such governance conducted? Is it a power game among the strong political actors? Does it really support the lives and work of migrants and refugees? Does it really reflect the opinions of citizens or ordinary people of receiving countries? The perspective from below is also necessary to construct the significant governance of migration. The findings of the area studies and the attention to citizens open our eyes to the importance of understanding local and people-level contexts in this special issue.

Since 2015, we have seen the EU facing a refugee crisis, and very complex EU common immigration policies might be collapsed now. However, each member state still manages to control migration flow by making policies at the EU level and establishing bilateral agreements with the third countries. In other words, in Europe, we can see complex and multi-layered migration governance which is composed of three actors: EU member states—EU—third countries.

This article examines the nature of this multi-layered migration governance that appeares after the mid 2000s by analyzing the function of each institution (for example, EU readmission agreement, EU mobility partnership, and French bilateral agreement) and each actor’s preference. This article analyzes the relationship between France as a member state and Senegal, Cap Vert, and Tunisia as the third counties which have established international agreements on migration issues with France and the EU.

I reach three conclusions as follows. Firstly, I confirm that EU common external migration policies and French bilateral agreements have similar contents such as issue linkage between irregular migration policy and development aid or visa facilitation. Moreover, I show the intention of the EU to replicate the strategy of existing French bilateral agreements in their partnerships. Then, I identify the relation between EU-level policies and French bilateral agreements not as mutually exclusive but as a complementary one.

Secondly, the preference of each actor is identified as follows. The EU has a strong motivation to accomplish the coherence among policies of EU member states on the control of migration flows by including other actors in their policy framework and making EU return directives. However, France and the third countries make their political decisions strongly based on the cost-benefit calculation. They pursue the discretion to implement restrictive or beneficial rules which put priority on their interests. Therefore, the EU has not accomplished the consistency in their external migration policies.

Thirdly, even though the preferences of member states and the third countries, the EU has increasingly made more success in concluding new Mobility Partnership and EU readmission agreements than before. The key elements that lead this progress are to compromise the strategies of member states and to establish the funds to support the third countries’ development to offer the incentive to participate in the EU migration framework. Therefore, we can still see the EU’s resilience in the external dimension of migration policy area.

As the migration problem has become one of the global issue, the multilayered migration governance emerged rapidly. Although ‘inter-regionalism’ is a one of the new phenomenon in the migration governance, states have been in disagreement with the migration management. Because the receiving states prefer to regulate migrants’ inflow to their territories, bilateralism and regionalism are suitable for their preference. Moreover, it is well-known that there have been power asymmetry between the receiving states and the sending states which have impeded the creation of the migration regime.

This article analyzes the mechanism of corporation between migrants receiving states region and sending states region within the Regional Consultative Processes: RCPs, which is characterized as informal cooperation framework by using a case study on ‘the Rabat Process’, political cooperation amongst the countries along the migration route between Central, Western, Northern Africa and Europe since 2006.

First of all, Chapter 1 consults debates on inter-regionalism, in order to determine RCPs as inter-regional approach with informal dialogue. Chapter 2 examines the history of inter-continental migratory flow from Africa to Europe and the reflective development of migration governance. Key finding here is that the negotiation for bilateralism, regionalism and inter-regionalism have processed simultaneously, nevertheless they are not competitive. Chapter 3 would give two suggestion to this paper. One is that the sending states are no longer rule takers, instead they seek leverage from the receiving states. The other is both the sending states and the receiving states use norm for different purposes in accordance to the goal. Based on these, I assumed that inter-regionalism offers specific functions to overcome power politics among sending and receiving states not only with its informality. In chapter 4, the Rabat Process is examined minutely by using the revised theory about 5 functions of inter-regionalism; balancing, institution building, rationalization, agenda setting and collective identity formation. And finally, chapter 5 resulted that the emergence of inter-regionalism in migration governance derived from the change of power distribution among states. In such a context, the effectiveness of the Rabat Process was caused by its implementation mechanism, for example the support projects. In addition, it mentioned that inter-regionalism is neither exclusive nor faultless approach, rather it would develop the migration governance through mutual interaction with bilateralism and regionalism.

During the 2010s, due to the political upheaval in the regions of the Middle East and North Africa, an unprecedented number of asylum seekers flooded into European countries. As part of its response, the European Union (EU) laid out a burden-sharing scheme, which would relocate asylum seekers concentrated in Greece and Italy to other EU member states. There is substantial variation in the level of popular support for such a burden-sharing scheme, among countries and individuals.

Why is there such a difference? We present two hypotheses to explain the difference. First, we predict that those with more trust in the EU are more likely than those with less trust to support the sharing scheme. Second, we also expect that in countries that have accepted a large number of refugees, the level of opposition to the sharing scheme might be mitigated among Eurosceptics, whereas in countries having accepted fewer refugees, the level of opposition might be strengthened among Eurosceptics.

To empirically examine these two hypotheses, using raw data from Eurobarometer 84.1, we conducted a multivariate regression analysis. The quantitative analysis gave empirical support to the two hypotheses. It showed that the level of individual Eurosceptic feelings had effects of decreasing their support level for sharing refugees. It also found the interaction effect such that the level of opposition among those with Eurosceptic views was diluted in countries with a large population ratio of refugees.

Our case studies on the Netherlands and Poland, which have been conducted following the quantitative analysis, uncovered the causal paths through which those two Eurosceptic factors influenced the public attitudes. The main findings are twofold. First, in both countries, it was found that anti-EU and anti-Muslim immigrants (or refugees) feelings have gone hand in hand together in political debates surrounding the refugee-sharing scheme, which led to the increase in the opposition level among those with Eurosceptic views. Second, there were some Dutch Eurosceptics who did not feel resistant to the EU scheme, with the considerations that the EU’s asylum policy has long alleviated the asylum burden on their country. By contrast, there were many Polish Eurosceptics who were strongly resistant to it, seeing the EU’s decision as imposition of Muslim asylum-seekers, whom they have not had enough experience of accepting in their societies. These findings suggest that in order to increase the level of popular support for sharing refugees, European states address the problem of political distrust in the EU.

Armed conflicts between government forces and other armed groups may become humanitarian disasters. As can be seen in the Syrian Arabic Republic, such conflicts are accompanied by large-scale displacement. How do the norms of the refugee regime deal with people who have escaped armed conflicts? This article offers some insights for exploring them by paying attention to the change and formation of norms in the refugee regime.

The first section regards an idea of a new approach to fill the gap between the function of the existing norm in refugee regime and contemporary crises caused by armed conflicts. This idea shows that, if the existing norm is amended, individuals who have fled from armed conflicts can be protected as “refugees” in terms of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention). To protect civilians out of their states of origin, this idea proposes the approach to incorporate international humanitarian law (IHL) into the interpretative standards for “refugee” in term of the Refugee Convention.

The second section regards an alternative norm of the refugee regime, that is to say, the norm of a temporary refuge. It has been argued that this norm was formed to protect civilian victims such as non-combatants who fled to other states from violence and other forms of threats. One pillar of this argument is that the norm prohibits the repatriation of civilians who crossed a border from a state engaged in armed conflict, where infringements of the principles or rules of IHL frequently occur. It is an intriguing phenomenon that the norm is recently regaining attention at the forums of the United Nations and academia.

The third section regards a premise to interpret the language of international law on the norms into the language of international politics. This article explains the principle to restrict access of refugees to the North. This restrictive principle functions to deter the refugee flow from the South.

In the final section, this article considers the implications of two norms for refugee regime. Ostensibly, the change and formation of the norms look to extend the scope to protect so that individuals, who flee armed conflict, may be covered. However, it is important to understand how the change and formation of the norms have been promoted in the political context of the asymmetry of power between the North and the South. It is the conclusion of this article that the norms justify the refugee regime to contain people, who are afraid of the tragedy of armed conflict, in the neighboring states and in the South.

This article postulates that Myanmar’s long-discarded ethnic minority group, the Rohingya people in Rakhine State, has a multifaceted characteristic—refugees, internally displaced persons, and stateless people. They have one common theme—the most persecuted minority in the world. This paper investigates their plight from its origins in the nineteenth century up to now and argues that ASEAN needs to consider on the applicability of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm to eradicate their plight. Interference, however, would be an unorthodox diplomatic move that violates ASEAN’s long-guarded non-interference principle.

The justifications for interference are three-fold: the Rohingyas are “stateless” people with no governmental protection for their right to life; they fall victim to the inter-communal violence that was invoked by nationalistic Buddhist movements; and their evacuation from the deteriorating human rights conditions on the ground puts their life into jeopardy at sea, and they are subject to human trafficking at a later stage.

The United Nations World Summit Outcome Document stipulated the R2P norm in 2005. ASEAN member states verbally accepted this norm’s emergence in the first instance, but are at odds with its introduction into regional politics. To examine the theoretical and policy application of it, we do not take this norm’s localization in Southeast Asia for granted.

This piece categorizes three types of arguments over the R2P and its localization within the ASEAN area when we examine the Rohingya issues in Myanmar and beyond. First, there are “accommodationsit” that say that the state sovereignty can be reconciled with humanitarian needs and imperative situations faced with the Rohingya’s plight. “Incrementalist” contend that ASEAN has endeavored to create a caring society for its people by establishing new institutions to promote and protect human rights and fundamental values. The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, as an overarching institution of the kind, is a case in point. Despite some institutional deficiencies, it has at least a “tongue”—promoting and protecting ASEAN people’s fundamental rights as encapsulated in the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration(2012). Incrementalist can view these existing legal frameworks, humanitarian and human rights instruments, to which the ASEAN member states have acceded, as the window of opportunity for a possible localization of R2P in the region. Finally, “Scepticist” regard the R2P’s localization as premature, since the ardent advocacy for the norm comes from external regional non-state actors. This makes the scepticist doubt that decision-makers in ASEAN really take the norm seriously.

In light of the events surrounding the Rohingyas from 2012 onwards, these three claims have been examined. The incrementalist view on R2P, supported by various ASEAN documents, seems to have gained ground. The ASEAN foreign ministers’ retreat meeting on December 2016 paved the way for ASEAN’s pragmatic application of R2P principle, without embarrassing Myanmar by directly alluding to the R2P. This article concludes that the gap between the non-interference principle and the humanitarian norm appears to be narrowing in the case of Myanmar’s Rohingya issues.

The waters connecting Indonesia and Australia (the Indian Ocean, the Timor Sea and the Arafura Sea) have been a “people smuggling” trade route to Australia since the mid-1990s. Many asylum seekers, mainly from Central Asia and the Middle East, departed Indonesian coasts for Australian territories, including Christmas Island and Ashmore Reef, on shabby wooden fishing boats. In response, the Australian government started to implement increasingly rigid border control policies in order to deter such boat arrivals, often portrayed as serious threats to Australian sovereignty. The most notorious is the so-called “Pacific Solution”, which was implemented between 2001 to 2008, and was resumed in 2012 to intercept and remove “boat people” to offshore detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

It is noteworthy that the Australian government has sought to address its boat people issues by positively using the regional cooperation framework of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, which is an official international forum established in 2002 on Australia’s initiative. Currently, the Bali Process has over 48 members, including all ASEAN countries and UNHCR, as well as a number of observer countries and international agencies.

This paper traces how the Bali Process has been intrinsically linked to Australian national policy on asylum seekers, and examines the tension among the members, including UNHCR, which has tried to put refugee protection onto the agenda of the Bali Process. In spite of UNHCR’s efforts, securitised discourse on irregular migration has dominated the Bali Process, which has served Australia’s political interests well at the risk of promoting a holistic regional approach for refugee protection.

On the other hand, as M. Curley & K. Vandyk mentioned, the Bali Process is an institutional space in which co-chairs Australia and Indonesia and other regional countries could contest and amend the norms and practices around the human rights of refugees and asylum-seekers. In this sense, the Bali Process has significant consequences for the international refugee regime in the Asia Pacific region, where most countries are not parties to the Refugee Convention or Protocol.

As such, emerging trends in the Bali Process are also considered to shed light on more recent positive signs, such as the new active role of Indonesia in shaping the agenda seen in the Jakarta Declaration, reflecting a broader humanitarian perspective than ever as well as the possibility of cooperation between the state-led Bali Process and civil society actors.

The linking of refugee movements with insecurity is not recent phenomenon. Throughout history refugee movements has often been perceived as threat and had strong political implication for states. Since the end of Cold War, and in particular after terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States, the issue of refugee movement has not only become a crucial political agenda, but it has been thoroughly securitised in Africa. The language of threat or danger dominates refugee discourse, and refugees have become a security agenda rather than a humanitarian issue. As a result, various refugee hosting states in Africa to change their refugee policies by implementing restrictive measures which deny human rights of asylum seekers and refugees.

Reflecting on increased concerns regarding state security, refugee and forced migration studies has rapidly expanded its researches regarding the relationship between refugee and security in refugee hosting countries. However, as far as researches about refugee or forced migrant in Africa concerned, in opposition to general trend in migrant studies in Europe or North America, there are a few researches regarding correlation between refugees and security in Africa. Certainly a number of security analysts examine the impact of refugee movements on national or/and international security, but most of their researches have focused on refugee hosting countries in global north and prioritise state security at expense of refugee protection.

Concerning these research gaps, this paper analyses the nature and extent of refugee threats to refugee-housing countries in Africa from a case study of Kenya. From previous studies provided by other scholars, this paper firstly considers two approaches of securitization: the Copenhagen school provided by Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Japp De Wilde; and the Paris school leaded by Didier Bigo and Jef Huysman,. Then, this paper addresses three main questions. First, in Kenya how the issues relating refugees are securitized? It traces the development of refugee policies since 1963. Second, the paper questions about the empirical relationship between refugees and security in Kenya. It focuses on Somali refugees in Kenya examines whether Somali refugees directly relate to recent terrorist incidents in Kenya. Third, if Somali refugees are not sources of terrorism or other insecurity, why does the Kenyan government accuse Somali refugees as a threat to security and defend restrictive refugee policies. This paper will then discuss the consequences of securitization and appropriate solutions for dealing with refugees and asylum seekers.

This article investigates that how Japan pursued inconsistent diplomatic conceptions, establishing a New Order in East Asia and avoiding the deterioration of the U.S.-Japan relationship, by focusing on Foreign Minister Arita’s diplomatic strategy toward the United States from the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War to 1940. It argues that Arita tried to maintain the U.S.-Japan relationship within the framework of the Nine Power Treaty by rectifying the open door policy for establishing a New Order in East Asia.

During the initial stage of the Second Sino-Japanese war, Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita devoted his primary attention to the creation of so called Toa Shin Chitsujo (New Order in East Asia) by establishing an economic block with China and a puppet state “Manchukuo.” The United States had been opposing this policy as it infringed upon the Nine Power Treaty which reaffirmed the open door policy and guaranteed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China. At the same time, Japan was economically dependent upon the US especially for raw materials that were of vital importance for Japan’s war against China.

The preset study reveals in what way Arita pursued two inconsistent diplomatic goals: avoiding the deterioration of US-Japan relations while attempting to establish a New Order in violation of the Nine Power Treaty. Previous researches interpreted Arita’s Statement of 18 November 1938 as abandonment of the Nine Power Treaty and alteration of the status quo. However, this article shows that Arita made efforts to keep Japanese engagement consistent with the Nine Power Treaty by asking the Department of State, through the U.S. Ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew, to rectify the interpretation of the open door policy in exchange for the protection and respect of the US rights in China. In that sense, the Nine Power Treaty served to Arita as a valuable asset in achieving inconsistent diplomatic objectives.

In order to alleviate the Depart of State skepticism about Arita’s approach and gain the US trust, Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to engage in protection of the US interests in China. Then policy makers of the Foreign Ministry decided to settle the problem of the blockade of the Yangtzu River. However, this policy had never been implemented because of the strong opposition from young diplomatic officers. As a result, the Department of State made their perception of Japan worse, and it bankrupted the Arita’s foreign policy.