Rethinking Migration Regimes: Lesson of Post-Communism

Recent thinking about migration regimes is often defined by an object-subject divide and focuses on aspects of regulation by state and non-state actor. If considered at all, migrants are mere challenges to the regime. Historiography often further reduces this approach and uses “migration regime” as a vague metaphor for state-centered sets of regulations, often only administration. In opposition to this, new research on border regimes emphasizes the so-called “autonomy of migration”. This school of thought argues for borders as social zones shaped by migrants, not as demarcation lines of enacted policies. Even though this is an important critique to the policy-based definition of migration regimes, it nevertheless reinforces a divide between state and non-state actors and exchanges the bipolarity of object and subject with the one of perpetrator and victim. In my response I will focus on the “German migration regime”, shaped by the development from the highly militarized German-German border to its center position in unified Europe today. For research on migration regimes, I suggest to rethink the original “Krasnerian” definition and to bring in a more complex picture of society. In short, I understand a migration regime as a changing and internationally negotiated field based on norms, principles and laws, in which actors (persons, institutions, organizations) communicate in order to manage migration to their favor. These interests often go beyond the primary field of migration. Therefore we need to step back from outcome oriented research and rather ask for the internal mechanisms that shape the regime and for the constitution of its actors.