Global Governance on the Ground

Organizing International Migration and Asylum at the Border
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-19-888912-0
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 178 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Global Governance on the Ground offers a new approach to how international organizations govern. Through an in-depth look at the case of migration and asylum, the book argues that international organizations (IOs) not only govern global challenges through rules, standards, expertise, and numbers but also through practice on the ground. Much scholarship has been devoted to the question of how IOs become autonomous agents and exercise authority to shape governance outcomes. Far less attention has been given to the way IOs use their field access to govern global issues on the ground-without first going through formal policy channels or renegotiating their authority. The book demonstrates that through field-based practice, IOs directly regulate global issues in the spaces where they become virulent, in different locations across the globe.

The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the European external border, comprising interviews at the headquarters of seven organizations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and three humanitarian NGOs. This, combined with an extensive document analysis, shows that field staff improvise to organize collective action on under-regulated issues and that headquarter staff consolidate and diffuse their operational knowledge. The book conceptualizes this governance mode that operates at a low institutional threshold but largely determines the de facto governance of contested or crisis-ridden global problems.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kortendiek, Nele

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Internationale Organisationen und Institutionen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Geopolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- 1: Introduction: Governing International Migration and Asylum on the Ground

- 2: Governing on the Ground

- 3: Global Mixed Migration Governance: Between Institutionalization and Crisis

- 4: Situated Learning: Creating Practical Knowledge in the Field

- 5: Stabilization: Consolidating and Diffusing Frontline Practices

- 6: Conclusion: Moving beyond the Border

Über Autor(innen)

Nele Kortendiek is a post-doctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt and Max Weber Fellow at the EUI. Her main research interests include policy-making by international organizations, contestation and change in international politics, and global migration governance. She obtained her PhD from Darmstadt University and holds an M.Sc. in International Relations Theory from LSE. During her PhD, she completed visiting stays at Oxford University and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.