Reconsidering the Partnership Approach in International Migration Cooperation

In the last few years, the importance of cooperating on issues of migration has become ever more apparent. The 2015–16 migration crisis in Europe and successive surges in irregular migration at the US–Mexico border since 2014 have illustrated the limitations of acting unilaterally and demonstrated the role that cooperation can play in managing migration more effectively. As a result, governments in Europe and North America have invested significant resources and political capital in their relationships with key countries of origin and transit. But an initial review suggests that while recent partnerships on migration are distinguished by their scope and ambition, they raise similar questions to their predecessors: namely, how effective they are in achieving their goals and whether they constitute true ‘partnerships’ in the proper sense of the term.