Mixed Migration from the Horn of Africa to the Mediterranean: Discussing the Multilateral Politics of Migrant Labelling

• In Event: The Global Refugee Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Abstract

The term ‘mixed migration’ emerged in discourses and policy documents of international organisations in 2006 to describe and manage population movements beyond the usual distinction between voluntary/economic and forced/political migrants. Coined as a “framework for action”, it is devoid of substantial legal grounds, but has nonetheless been used both by the IOM and the UNHCR with notably different meanings in different sites of intervention. This article offers a political genealogy of mixed migration as an entry point into the international politics of population management with a situated approach. It focuses on its emergence in the context of the Horn of Africa, using insights gathered during empirical fieldworks in Sudan, Yemen and Kenya and. It sheds light on both the institutional dynamics within multilateral organisations and the impact of the context in which they operate. The main empirical results of this research are to illustrate the evolution of the cognitive and policy translations of “mixed migration” from a protection agenda to a detection and data gathering objectives, which echoes a global trend in migration governance that could be termed “the retreat of protection.” By confronting the organisations’ discourses, IO’s agents’ discourses and behaviours and operations led by the IOs in the Horn of Africa, in the Mediterranean and in other regions or in multilateral arenas, it unveils the geographical and political asymmetries as well as cognitive dissonances in the global politics of migration governance.

Author

• Helene C. Thiollet, Sciences Po