Out now: Our Special Issue(s) on “Challenging State Sovereignty: A Multi-level Approach to Southeast and East Asian Migration“
The multi-level dimension of migration governance is gaining increasing attention – and that includes the regional and sub-regional level. As a contribution to this research, Nicola Piper, Jürgen Rüland and Stefan Rother have guest edited a two-part special Issue for the European Journal of East Asian studies (EJEAS).
The theme is "Challenging State Sovereignty: A Multi-level Approach to Southeast and East Asian Migration" and the topics of the articles range from "Mobility Norms in Free Trade Agreements" to the migration industry, securitization of migrant, refugee protection, migrant domestic workers as agents of development and pilgrimage migration to Mecca. The seven empirical studies in this Special Issue thus examine current political, economic, social and legal dimensions of migration Southeast Asia from an interdisciplinary perspective, linking the discussion of migration-sovereignty nexus to 'regional migration regimes', 'the transnational-national intersection' and 'grass-roots-responses'. The common message that emerges from the paper in this issue - that state sovereignty in the area of migration is being challenged from multiple levels - leads us to argue for a future research agenda which would align the study of sovereignty more closely with governance studies as well as studies on norm diffusion. Such an agenda would contribute new insights into emerging forms of sovereignty beyond the confines of the state.