Making or Unmaking a Movement? : Challenges for Civic Activism in the Global Governance of Migration

• This article discusses dilemmas of global civic activism from a neo-Gramscian perspective as both subordinated and a potential challenge to hegemonic neoliberal order. With the investigational focus on the People’s Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA) event, the space for civic activism relating to the intergovernmental Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and its associated Civil Society Days and Common Space (CSD/CS) is analysed. The article asks how the future of PGA activism may be influenced by its formalised representation within the GFMD. It posits that the PGA has landed at a crossroad between becoming a global activist counterhegemonic movement to a dominant neoliberal migration policy and being captured in a tokenist subordinated inclusion within a truncated ‘invited space’ for interchange. This ambiguous position jeopardises its impact on global migration governance, discussed with reference to theories of transversal politics and issues of counterhegemonic alliance-building.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Internationell migration och etniska relationer (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- International Migration and Ethnic Relations (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Globaliseringsstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Globalisation Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

civic activism; global governance; international migration; neoliberalism; social movements

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)