Beyond authority: governing migration and asylum through practice on the ground
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241278568 |
| Author | Nele Kortendiek |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241278568
European Journal of
International Relations
2024, Vol. 30(4) 1022 –1049
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661241278568
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Beyond authority: governing
migration and asylum through
practice on the ground
Nele Kortendiek
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
European University Institute, Italy
Abstract
How do international organizations (IOs) govern transnational challenges? Most
theories maintain that IOs exercise authority to govern. What these authority-focused
accounts tend to overlook, however, are instances of de facto governance. Especially
in emerging, contested, and crisis-ridden issue areas, authority has often not been
established or become unsettled. Yet, IOs govern here, too. Take the example of
migration and asylum: This policy field is characterized by institutional and policy gaps.
During the crisis at Europe’s border in 2015–2016, IOs governed mixed movements
nonetheless. Through organizing collective action on the ground, they not only created
direct regulative impacts on the lives of people on the move (the final addressees of
international politics) but also defined what mixed migration means as a global policy
concern. I draw on practice theory and fieldwork at the European external border in
Greece to draw attention to governing modes that operate at a very low institutional
threshold. I propose a minimal conception of governance that shifts attention from
authority sources to governing effects to account for such governance forms. This
re-conceptualization makes the study of how IOs govern outside their established
authority, in concrete geographical places, possible.
Keywords
Global governance, authority, international organizations, practice, competence, crisis,
improvisation, migration and asylum
Corresponding author:
Nele Kortendiek, Institute of Political Science, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6,
60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany and Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, EUI, Florence, Italy.
Email: kortendiek@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
1278568EJT0010.1177/13540661241278568European Journal of International Relations X(X)Kortendiek
research-article2024
Original Article
Kortendiek 1023
Introduction
To respond to global problems, international organizations (IOs) set standards, contrib-
ute to law-making, provide expertise, and create benchmarks. Yet, IO staff not only
address global issues through numbers, standards, policies, and rules, they also use their
access to the field and their professional skill sets to improvise collective action on global
policy concerns. For example, naval officers affiliated with multinational forces created
by NATO and the EU undertake interaction patrols and conduct search-and-seizure oper-
ations in the West Indian Ocean to respond to maritime threats, including piracy and
illicit arms trafficking. What they do is highly informal and experimental: “Counter-
piracy was not a formal UN naval peacekeeping mission”; they “work in the absence of
any shared command structures or formal commitments of states” (Bueger and Edmunds,
2021: 184). Since the International Maritime Organization lacked the means to authorize
or organize any large-scale, multilateral response, “No one is in charge” (Bueger and
Edmunds, 2021: 185). Still, seafarers constructively work together off the Coast of
Somalia. Relying on their nautical skills, they developed new patrolling techniques, con-
duct boarding operations, assist distressed mariners, and detain piracy suspects to secure
international shipping. Similarly, humanitarian professionals working in Haiti and other
crisis zones informally redefine which areas are “safe enough” for humanitarian action
(Beerli, 2018: 79). Frontline humanitarians use their decisional autonomy on the ground
and their personal, professional know-how to contest “no-go zones,” effectively deter-
mining which communities receive aid. In the issue area of migration and asylum, border
guards, rescue professionals, migration lawyers, asylum caseworkers, and humanitarian
professionals spontaneously organized collective action on mixed migration at the
European external border during the migration and refugee crisis. Field-based staff—
employed by various international organizations (IOs), both public and private—impro-
vised extensively to conduct search-and-rescue operations, develop asylum procedures,
and accommodate people on the move. Given the confusion at the border and because
their organizations have limited authority on mixed migration, they utilized their practi-
cal knowledge to find interim solutions.
What should we make of field-based staff improvising to handle migration move-
ments at the border, going off script to “define the legitimate means of thinking and
doing security in the humanitarian space” (Beerli, 2018: 71), and experimenting to
respond to security threats at sea? I argue in this article that the daily, ad hoc activities of
those working at the frontlines of transnational challenges are a form of governance in its
own right. Rather than IO personnel “just doing stuff” or implementing pre-defined rules
and mandates, they govern on the ground. This way of governing is rooted in IO employ-
ees’ personal, professional competence rather than their organization’s collective author-
ity. It is geared at finding pragmatic solutions in complex everyday work contexts and is
not necessarily consciously intended to be governance. Nonetheless, it has regulative
impacts on the lives of target populations. It coordinates behavior, reduces uncertainty,
and defines global challenges as concrete policy concerns. Therefore, I view it as a form
of governance—global governance through practice on the ground.
Most theories of IOs and global governance have overlooked instances of IO staff
governing through practice on the ground. As the examples above indicate, improvised
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