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The Role of Civil Society in the Migration Policy Debate

Document number
1820
Date
2004
Title
The Role of Civil Society in the Migration Policy Debate
Author/publisher
Colleen Thouez
Availability
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Document type(s)
Research/Study/Analysis,
Keywords
Global Migration Perspectives No 12, Prevention, Awareness Raising, Media, Information Campaigns, Empowerment, Advocacy, Civil society, NGO, Human Rights approach, Activism, Education, Training; Migrant rights; Migration management; Comprehensive approach to migration; Migration policy; Restrictive migration measures, Irregular Migration, Feminization of migration, Economic migration, Labour migration, Free movement, Undocumented migrants; Undocumented labour;
Summary
This paper focuses on the roles and responsibilities of international civil societyorganizations (CSOs) vis-à-vis international migration policy development, dialogue andrelated advocacy work. It looks at the current environment giving a bird’s eye view ofCSOs working on migration issues and the scope and nature of existing “policynetworks”. Most CSOs in this field focus on one aspect of migration advocacy andpolicy development such as human rights of migrants or trafficking in human beings.Advocacy rarely encompasses the whole migration policy field. Two major factorsaccounting for this are: the nature of international migration; and the nature of policynetworks in this field. As mentioned, however, CSOs have recently come onto the stageand are beginning to play a more important role. How the third force might furthercontribute to international migration policy development and related advocacy work isassessed drawing from recent literature on civil society, and referring in part to how thethird force has evolved in other fields.
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