The Role(s) of Migration Diplomacy : The concept of migration diplomacy from a role theory perspective and the case of Morocco's "migration roles"

• Main Author: Ahlborn, Filip
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen 2019
• Subjects: migration diplomacy; migration governance; role theory; rationalism; constructivism; Morocco; Political Science; Statsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-395871

“Migration diplomacy” has emerged as a concept to theorize the increasingly important role of international migration and migration governance in states’ foreign policy and international relations, in an effort to bridge the gap between migration studies and international relations/foreign policy analysis. The concept has recently been more formally defined and introduced by Adamson and Tsourapas (2018), who suggest a future research agenda by proposing a structuralist, bargaining framework for analyzing states’ migration diplomacy, where states are either migrant receiving, sending, or transit states. This thesis argues that this theoretical approach risks overlooking key aspects and challenges that characterize international migration as a foreign policy issue and contemporary developments in the field. It investigates the shortcomings of establishing migration diplomacy as a chiefly rationalist bargaining concept, and suggests introducing role theory as an alternative approach for migration diplomacy analysis. It argues that role theory’s understanding of structural positions as partly interpreted and socially enacted, and its view of the international system as a more deeply social and normative setting can be particularly suited for understanding migration diplomacy aspects that a rationalist bargaining perspective overlooks. While not developing a fully formed role typology for migration diplomacy analysis, this thesis tentatively exemplifies this general approach through the case of Morocco’s migration diplomacy inrecent years.