Beyond the EU Benchmark. The Role of Informal Cross-Border Mobility and Labour in Regional Free Movement Regimes.

Free movement frameworks in regional economic communities across the world are often evaluated using the European Union as a benchmark. However, this EU-centric lens overlooks diverse regional contexts and the crucial role of informal cross-border circulation and migrant labour. This article analyses free movement regimes in Mercosur and ECOWAS, drawing on 58 interviews with government and civil society stakeholders. It examines how informal circulation and labour, often compensating for policy gaps, are not exceptions but central to these frameworks, reflecting historical, normative, and economic regional contexts for human mobility. Policymakers tolerate or even encourage informality for pragmatic and normative reasons, with attitudes varying based on context and perceived risks, resulting in trends of spatial convergence and divergence. Integrating regionalism theories and the autonomy of migration perspective, while acknowledging the artificiality of colonial borders, the article argues that informality drives free movement and challenges hierarchical comparisons with the European Union. By reframing informality as a constitutive element of free movement, it offers a broader, context-sensitive understanding of (in)formal free movement regimes in the Global South.