Lecture | Lunch Research Seminar
Forum Shopping from Below: The Global Political Economy of Transnational Migrant Advocacy Networks
- Date
- Wednesday 11 March 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.30
Registration
All are welcome, however please register in advance at l-peg@hum.leidenuniv.nl to receive a copy of the paper and lunch.
Abstract
How do transnational advocacy networks influence outcomes in global labour and migration governance? Within the migration governance space in the South Asia-Gulf migration corridor, transnational advocacy networks (TAN) play an underexamined role. The case of transnational migrant advocacy networks in Gulf migration well illustrates the multi-level, multiscalar nature of global migration governance, and the role of the formal and social in labour regulation. Cognisant of their position in the global labour market and global value chains, this paper finds that nongovernmental actors find and make space within the diffuse migration governance complex to engage in migration and labour governance activities, and to put forward their ideas, policy proposals, grievances, and rights-based claims to the venues where they perceive they have a greater chance to effect outcomes. That is, this paper sees transnational migration activist networks engage in forum shopping from below. The article argues that the diffuse nature of global migration governance and the structure of global value chains provides agential space for TANs to shape migration governance but their power faces constraints. The constraints flow from the same political economy factors that facilitated their emergence and the possibility of their collective mobilisation in the first place. Moreover, the preferences of these networks on policy reform rather than anti-systemic activism is predicated on the nature and structure of an extractive market for global labour in which their worker communities are embedded.