From rights to democratic agency: A demoi-cratic approach to modern migration governance

Abstract In response to the multiple protection gaps that migrants face both on their journeys and in their destination countries, this article argues for a shift from a rights-based to an agency-based approach to migration. In order to improve the legal protection of international migrants, migrants must not only acquire additional rights, but also democratic agency and thus the power to hold foreign governments accountable for any rights violations they may commit. Based on these considerations, the article develops a model of demoi-cratic migration governance. Decisions about migrants’ rights should be transferred from the national to the transnational level and thus be taken jointly by several demoi, which mutually agree on a set of rights that they will grant to each other’s members in their respective territories. Because of its inherently reciprocal logic, a demoi-cratic approach to migration promises to strengthen not only the rights of migrants, but also the incentives for states to fulfil their resulting obligations. In a demoi-cratic framework, when states fail to comply with reciprocally binding migration agreements, they endanger not only the rights of others, but also those of their own citizens and are therefore likely to face a 2-fold form of resistance that is absent in unilateral approaches. At a time when states are increasingly fortifying their borders, withdrawing from multilateral agreements, and openly challenging democratic norms and principles, the ideal of demoi-cratic migration governance offers a much-needed counter-position to populism, unilateralism and xenophobic closure.