Description
Across the world, governments and political leaders – both democratic and autocratic –, are becoming more and more creative in mobilizing policy tools that circumvent judicial or democratic scrutiny in order to enact migration policies in line with their economic, geopolitical or ideological goals. In this context, we have noted the use of what we call autocratic policy tools – a tendency towards a concentration of the power to make laws and rules in one hand, the hand that also executes the law. This is exemplified by straightforward ‘rule by decree’ situations, but also by very broad delegations of lawmaking power to the executive, without any meaningful constraints, or by executive policies that entirely lack a legal basis or judicial oversight.Examples of such autocratic policy tools that avoid legal safeguards and/or parliamentary law-making can be found across the world: For instance, in the United States, executive action has been a tool for Presidents to enact both liberalizing and restrictive migration reforms; Obama’s decision to grant temporary stay and work rights to certain undocumented immigrant children through the 2012 DACA Act or Trump’s 2017 travel ban for people from seven majority-Muslim countries are two prime examples. In Morocco, a 2013 royal decree by King Mohamed VI launched the country’s first-ever regularization of irregular migrants despite lacking legal grounds for such a procedure. In the Netherlands, the government introduced a 6-months waiting period for family members who were entitled to family reunification with recognized refugees in 2022, without any legal basis. And in 2023, the leaders of the military junta in Niger issued a decree that decriminalized irregular migration and retracted the controversial 2015 anti-smuggling law, a move that was welcomed by local civil society actors but criticized by European governments.
This workshop aims to bridge insights from Law and Political Science to explore the variegated uses and the scope of such autocratic policy tools in migration policy across the Global North and South, as well as how these uses relate to political regime contexts (democracy/autocracy) and to policy outcomes (restrictive/liberal).
Period | 14 Nov 2024 → 15 Nov 2024 |
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Event type | Workshop |
Location | Leiden, NetherlandsShow on map |
Degree of Recognition | International |