La Strada Documentation Center

Migration without Borders: an Investigation into the Free Movement of People

Document number
1625
Date
2005
Title
Migration without Borders: an Investigation into the Free Movement of People
Author/publisher
Antoine Pécoud, Paul de Guchteneire, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Global Migration Perspectives No. 27
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Research/Study/Analysis,
Keywords
Global Commission on International Migration, Informal sector, Labour exploitation, 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
While there have long been discussions on the ethics of free movement, several recent books have dealt with the Migration Without Borders scenario in a more comprehensive way, indicatingits current attractiveness. Given the strong connotations associated to the ‘open borders’notion, this project prefers speaking of ‘migration without borders’: after all, ‘open borders’seem to be a contradiction in its own terms, and the MWB scenario better conveys the ideathat one deals specifically with migration and not with all the other implications of borders.This article is structured in the following way. The first section describes the context, i.e. thecontemporary evolutions of migration and border controls. The following sections investigatethe MWB scenario from four different perspectives: human rights/ethics, economics, socialand practical. It relies both on a review of the literature and on the contributions written by the participants to the project.
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