Safe migration programme interventions: regulating migrants through anticipation, traceability, and re-embedding

Abstract

In 2018 the United Nations’ (UN) promulgated its global strategy for migration governance, titled the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which elevates safe migration to a policy principle, objective, and strategy.[1] Safe migration has been in vogue within the aid sector since the mid-2000s, especially amongst the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) and International Organisation for Migration (IOM), as well as several NGOs that work with migrant populations. Drawing on my recent research on safe migration programmes in the Mekong region in Southeast Asia (with specific focus on Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar), I show how these programmes draw on anticipation (i.e., programmes intervene prior to forecasted danger, risk, and peril within labour migration) and traceability (where programmes attempt to facilitate – as opposed to control mobility – through connectivity). These temporal and spatial qualities, in turn, precondition safe migration programmes to become dependent on large networks of migrants in Thailand. Although rarely part of aid agencies’ programme design, safe migration programmes re-embed labour migrants as social agents through programme implementation. Hence, safe migration programme delivery presents a case study for how emergent migration governance generates new spatial, temporal, and social relations.