The Geopolitics in the Global Compacts

This book critically examines how states have leveraged the 2018 UN Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees to advance their geopolitical and strategic interests. Through a detailed analysis, it explores the emerging norm of state responsibility for managing migration while exposing the gaps, contradictions, and silences surrounding key issues such as non-refoulement, internal displacement, and climate migration. More than five years after the adoption of the Global Compacts, the authors provide a thought-provoking reflection on the assumptions, logics, and rhetoric underpinning these agreements and their implementation by states and international organizations.

This book is an essential resource for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in the fields of migration studies, international relations, and human rights as well as those seeking to understand the complex interplay between migration diplomacy and global governance.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics.

Nicholas R. Micinski is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University. He is the author of three books: Aiding Autocrats: Migration Management, Governance and Repression in Africa (2026, co-authored with Kelsey P. Norman), Delegating Responsibility: International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union (2022), and UN Global Compacts: Governing Migrants and Refugees (2021).

Camille Lefebvre is a PhD candidate at Leiden University in a joint program with Université Laval. She was previously Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and Judicial Clerk at the Federal Court of Appeal of Canada (FCA), and is the recipient of the Louis-Philippe Pigeon Award (2024), the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Doctoral Scholarship (2022), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award (2021), and the John Peters Humphrey Fellowship (2021).