Trade-related regulatory frameworks create new categories of migrants with rights and benefits that, depending on how they translate in national laws and practices, yield inequalities between trade-related and other migrants. This project sets out to study:
• the drivers and patterns of migration governance in European and Asian trade agreements, paying particular attention to the creation of new migrant categories and their discrimination potential
• the effects of these new modes of migration governance on national migration systems in terms of consolidating or mitigating the shift to a "mobility" approach and its implications for (in)equality
IP 24 conducts a bi-continental case-studies comparing the EU/EFTA FTAs and the Asian-Pacific FTAs to learn about policy diffusion of migration clauses (visa, ENT, quotas) and mobility provisions (skills transfer, internships). Its research question is how can the proliferation of migration clauses in trade agreements be explained from the perspective of "migration" to "mobility" of temporary and economically motivated flows? IP24’s hypothesized that for niche sectors, more exceptions to national immigration laws are offered, while if trade agreements liberalize sectors of general economic interest, these match immigration law-making at national level more closely.
The case study of Switzerland will use the NCCR data (survey and legislative database) to disaggregate the migrant/service provider categories to which Swiss FTAs commit reflected in implementing legislation, particularly in Art. 26 service providers of the Swiss Alien’s Act, and Art. 21 Alien Act, the priority principle. We also want to learn which categories of migrant workers created by EFTA/Swiss trade agreements have no match in Swiss implementing legislation, including stagiaires or others.
The inclusion of migration norms in trade agreements is symptomatic of the regulatory shift from "migration" as long-term, sedentary, territorially based phenomenon to "mobility" as temporary, flexible and functionally-based flows.
a) In the thematic dimension, we focus on the regulatory interface of economic drivers (demand/supply-driven mobility) and societal dynamics ((in)equalities through categorizations and their mitigation)
b) At the socio-spatial level of analysis the core scenario only focuses on the meso level of institutions and discourses while the steady state scenario also addresses the micro level of the subjects of regulation at the stage of implementation.
We analyse discrimination arising out of regulatory innovation through trade agreements. Migrant categories moving through a trade agreement benefit from facilitated and fast-tracked admissions into national and regional labor markets and often enjoy a wider panoply of post-establishment rights than labor migrants moving through national immigration law and EU/ASEAN directives. Such multi-layered governance between trade and implementing legislation implies that admission and post-admission rights differ for categories being moved through trade venues. Such interjurisdictional divergence, depending on whether a trade or non-trade admission channel is chosen, merits closer attention.
