Scholars of Excellence Workshop: Migration Diplomacy in an Era of Interdependence & Fragmentation

The concept of migration diplomacy emerged to explain how states instrumentalise cross-border mobility for strategic gain. Yet, the geopolitical landscape in which this concept was forged is rapidly vanishing. As the global order fractures into multipolarity and ‘weaponised interdependence’ replaces clear cooperation/coercion binaries, the traditional tools of migration statecraft are being upended. In an era defined by systemic fragmentation, is the framework of migration diplomacy still relevant? Or does it require radical repurposing to capture the complexity of the emerging post-liberal order? 

This workshop convenes a select group of scholars to stress-test the boundaries of the field. We proceed from the premise that the migration state is no longer the sole, or even primary, container of diplomatic action. Instead, we ask how migration diplomacy must be reimagined to account for new actors (from city networks and private corporations to militias and hybrid regimes); new approaches (moving beyond material bargaining to performative governance and symbolic politics); and new geographies (where ‘middle powers’ in the Global South leverage mobility to navigate the rifts between rising and declining hegemons). By bringing together leading theorists with regional experts on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas, this workshop aims to decentre and reconstruct the study of migration diplomacy. It seeks to determine how the concept can be repurposed to explain a world where migration is not merely a subject of foreign policy, but forms a constitutive element of global (dis)order.

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