Search

Global fish and seafood production has more than doubled in the last fifty years, with Europe accounting for 16% of the worldwide capture production. Fishing has not only contributed to a worldwide decrease in biodiversity, but it has also had a significant impact on marine ecosystems. And in this regard, as highlighted by the 2020 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, the Mediterranean Sea has showed the highest percentage of stocks fished at unsustainable levels out of all the FAO’s Major Fishing Areas. In the related scenario, climate change may worsen the problem and offer a new threat to the long-term survival of the fishing sector. Within this framework, a number of key questions arise: how can fisheries governance react (or not react) to the new challenges of climate change? What international and European policies are currently in place for dealing with this problem? And, lastly, are they adequate for the new climate change challenges? This article aims to raise the attention on these crucial issues by providing a preliminary overview of the major challenges that affect the resilience of fisheries management in the Mediterranean Sea and of the relevant international and European policies that have been developed so far.

International audience; Gender, class, ethnicity and generation played a determining role in exposure to the COVID-19 virus and in access to care. This translated into differences in communicability, morbidity and mortality. Migrants and ethnic minorities have been over-represented among serious cases, just as they are often also disproportionately affected during natural disasters and crises. We focus on a segment of vulnerable population defined by the French term ‘inconfinables’. Related to the term ‘confinement’, used in France to mean lockdown, the ‘inconfinables’ are those individuals that, due to personal, socio-economic and administrative factors, may not respect the governmental measures proposed to contain the spread of the pandemic. The article presents an comparative analysis of different approaches implemented at the domestic level (in France and Italy) to gain original insights into the practice of lockdown regimes. These insights are used to explore the nexus between ethnic social inequalities, governmental capacity to ensure effective protection of the whole population and human rights.

Sebbene le istanze per la limitazione delle migrazioni internazionali fossero già da tempo pressanti, gli attentati dell’11 settembre 2001 sono assurti a momento emblematico di svolta della politica dei confini. Il nuovo secolo si è aperto sotto il segno della riaffermazione della volontà dei governi nazionali, e di riflesso delle istituzioni europee, di ripristinare un più stretto controllo sulla mobilità transfrontaliera, anche a costo di sottrarsi agli obblighi sanciti dalle convenzioni internazionali e di compromettere il proprio impegno per la tutela dei diritti umani. Il tema dei confini interroga anche il mondo accademico e il dibattito scientifico. Intorno ai nessi tra confini, migrazioni e diritti umani, varie discipline scientifiche si confrontano ed entrano in dialogo con la società. In questa chiave, il presente volume, frutto dell’iniziativa del CRC “Migrazioni e diritti umani” dell’università degli studi di Milano, intende proporre una riflessione a più voci, da diverse prospettive disciplinari, intorno a una questione così cruciale per il nostro tempo.

The inventory of climate-related disasters is emblematic of the increasing impact of climate change and the concomitant rise in climate migration risk. It is becoming clear that, in the words of Ban Ki-moon, “no country or city—rich or poor—is immune”. At the same time, the design of normative measures is undergoing a radical redefinition, towards assuming a “preventive” role dictated by the imminent need to give a legal meaning to the uncertainty of this new epoch. The article starts from the recent adoption by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of a resolution on “A legal status for ‘climate refugees’” to explore the potential role an anticipatory approach may play in shaping disaster-affected mobility regimes. It is timely to reflect on its legal implications by discussing emerging practices and the challenges of a normative evolution, that even if fragile, can be understood as part of an effort to reframe the international legal order towards balancing sovereign and common concerns. By considering Italy’s contribution to the debate, the article sheds light on the role of domestic actors, such as courts and local authorities, as agents for legal development in multilevel environmental migration governance.

The concept of intra-regional connectivity is emerging as the rationale for the ASEAN regional project and will develop around three pillars: the physical infrastructure, the institutions and the people. Specifically, the facilitation of the free movement of highly skilled migrant workers at the regional level is identified in ASEAN documents as a primary mechanism to achieve people-to-people connectivity. The paper aims to study the emerging regional mobility framework under ASEAN by focusing attention on the potential impact of mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs) on professional services as connecting instruments. The objective is to provide new insights into the building of ASEAN’s regional process by taking the mutual recognition regime as a means to reconcile the traditional prerogatives of sovereignty and new common concerns in the context of cross-border human mobility and economic development. The review of the current evolution of ASEAN MRA architecture will focus on the challenges and promises of the intra-regional cooperation in developing the legal framework by fostering a rule-based organisation. To this end, the analysis will be complemented by an examination of Thailand’s mutual recognition initiatives for professionals in the health services.

Universal access to social protection for migrant workers is emerging as a problematic issue in the implementation of free movement regimes at a regional level. This article focuses on the concept of regional governance as a possible mechanism to address the unsolved challenges of social security regimes to extend coverage. To this end, the article looks at current legal developments in two regional projects (ASEAN and MERCOSUR) to identify a creative approach to strengthen the development of national floors of social protection. The interest of using these case studies lies in exploring whether the regional integration process can play a major role in the progressive extension of social protection rights to migrant workers by facilitating the adoption of social security agreements.

This chapter sheds light on the role of regional migration regimes in addressing the following questions: What is the role of regional frameworks in migration governance and how far have regional frameworks taken up the issue of environmentally induced migration? What is the relationship between regional, national and international governance? These questions are answred from a political scientist and legal perspective. The paper argues that the effects of climate change and environmental disaster on cross-border displacement are already felt, and they will affect predominantly countries of the same region in the coming years. Individual states are not full-equipped to protect persons affected by environmental changes and to deal with these phenomena a significant dynamism is developing at the regional level with the elaboration of specific instruments and policies. In the first part, the chapter will introduce such regional initiatives to identify domestic and international drivers behind their emergence and then it will zoom on the current development in Central America. In particular, by analyzing the current discussion of the RCM Guide to effective Practices for RCM Member Countries to understand the potential of this emerging approach in particular, the role of humanitarian temporary mechanisms, implemented at domestic level.

L’article vise a developper une etude sur l’evolution de l’acces aux droits sociaux des travailleurs migrants et leur portabilite dans un cadre juridique multi-niveaux. L’article fournira une introduction historique aux regles et aux modalites d’acces a la protection sociale dans le contexte des accords existants, avec une attention particuliere portee sur les niveaux bilateral et regional. L’objectif est de mieux comprendre l’origine des regimes de securite sociale et d’identifier les principales caracteristiques de ces modeles. La presentation de pratiques concernant les mecanismes de portabilite des prestations de securite sociale contribuera a l’identification des elements requis afin de promouvoir un systeme transnational de droits de securite sociale.

This contribution argues that despite the fact that the United Nations Refugee Convention does not cover persons subject to climate change induced displacement, these people should be protected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the case because UNHCR's own Executive Committee has incorporated the broader African definition of a refugee that does include climate refugees into their protection mandate. We therefore conclude that UNHCR should exercise protection activities over climate refugees to be consistent with the mandate given to this United Nations programme by international law. To arrive at this conclusion we first briefly introduce the question about the protection of climate change induced displacement in the social science debate. We examine the legal definitions of refugees, agreeing with the most common interpretations of both United Nations and regional instruments. We then indicate how, by expressly extending its mandate, UNHCR itself has taken on the responsibility for the protection of people subject to climate change induced displacement. Finally, we report how, despite this mandate, UNHCR is still refusing to exercise its mandate properly, and that if it were to do so, a significant step could be taken in ensuring the protection of people subject to climate change induced displacement.

The international community has devoted a substantial effort to understanding the concrete impact of environmental degradation (defined as slow-onset environmental degradation, such as rising sea levels, increased salinization, desertification, and soil or coastal erosion) on human mobility and to fostering research to identify migration, in particular labour mobility, as a positive adaptation strategy.

The interaction between environmental change and human mobility is attracting global attention, both in policy circles and in the contemporary literature. This introductory essay proposes using the concept of pluralism to explore the multi-dimensional relationship between climate change and migration and to advance new perspectives and concepts to interpret the emerging theory of adaptive migration. The papers included in this themed section cover diverse issues in this area of research by focusing on the contemporary debate about the ‘migration-as-adaptation strategy’. The papers address six key areas: the role of law in dealing with climate-induced migration, the category of place related to the community of origin and destination, the theme of climate justice and rights, the contribution of international organisations in framing the migration-as-adaptation strategy, adaptive measures developed in the Maldives, and seasonal nomadism in the East Sudan. All are quite different, but all converge in their emphasis on the role of the individual, the migrant, and on whether and how state responses are adequate in the progressive concordance between adaptation and individual capability. This introduction raises a set of salient questions that might catalyse multiple new research trajectories over the coming years.

It has been forecast that up to forty nation-states are at risk of disappearing due to rising sea levels related to climate warming. Such a situation would lead to a form of statelessness never experienced before in history and would raise serious concerns about migration as well as important legal questions. Although often mentioned in the media by NGOs and other international bodies, this issue has rarely been addressed by legal scholars or by social scientists specialized in migration studies. This chapter examines the available literature on the topic and presents basic geographic data to assess the validity of the danger. We then discuss the legal frameworks and policies that could be developed to mitigate the threat of climate change related statelessness, a concept that remains in need of clarification under both international law and human rights law. This chapter seeks to explore legal means to deal with populations displaced by the adverse impacts of climate change, that are consistent with a state’s existing international legal obligations. The ongoing debate about this challenge aims to identify normative measures to secure a legal status for forced migrants, who risk becoming stateless when their state disappears.

The absence of a multilateral migration regime has been paralleled by the progressive widening over the past few years of the variety of non-state actors, such as diaspora groups, involved in migration management.

Economic globalization has not so much diminished the autonomy of the state, including over immigration, as enhanced its competence and legal tools. It was recognized at the outset that despite well-documented welfare gains, states show an aversion to open-door migration policies, insisting on their national prerogatives to control and restrict migration flows. This contemporary trend recalls the contradictory process identified by Sassen: the construction of border-free economic areas versus the increasing border controls against irregular migrants (free circulation of capital versus free movement of persons) (Sassen, 1996). Migration is being ‘lamented as the “missing global flow”’ (Ranis, 2007, p. 285), even though welfare gains from migration have been estimated to outnumber those from trade liberalization in goods and services. Compared to ‘the other dimensions of globalization’ (World Bank, 2006, p. 31), in particular, trade in goods and services, the system does not seem ready to put the liberalization of the cross-border movement of persons on to the global agenda but is more oriented towards a ‘nearly complete globalization of everything but labour’ (Freeman, 2006, p. 145; Pritchett, 2006, p. 12; Nonnenmacher, 2012).

There is a growing consensus that international migratory movements ‘do not respect national boundaries’ and migration can be identified, as argued by Dollar and Wade, as a ‘problem without passport’ (Haas and Hird, 2013, p. xvii). It appears to be increasingly difficult for states to address this issue from a unilateral perspective, and new supranational models and a global model are emerging as possible instruments to facilitate the evolution of migratory regimes (IOM, 2013).

The world’s highest ratio of migrants to national population is to be found in the Middle East,1 and the region is one of the most fascinating arenas in which to observe international migration flows, both regionally and internationally. The growth of migrant labour in the Middle East was both rapid and massive and was directly linked to the development of the oil economy in the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf and also marginally to forced migration that triggered displacement at the regional level. Interestingly, mobility in the case of the Middle East generally intertwines labour migration and refugee flows: from Palestine, Sudan and Iraq and, since 2011, Syrian refugees have found refuge in neighbouring countries. Refugees and labour migrants are often counted together in national statistics and censuses. The number of migrants in the region rose from 800,000 to 1.8 million between 1970 and 1975.2 In the 1980s, the Middle East became the largest market for migrant labour the world has ever known, and just before the 1991 Gulf War the oil-rich states of the Arab Gulf taken together accommodated more than seven million migrants, five million of whom were workers (Stanton Russell and Teitelbaum, 1992).