Global Governance on the Ground: Organizing International Migration and Asylum at the Border

Global Governance on the Ground offers a new approach to how international organizations govern. Through an in-depth look at the case of migration and asylum, the book argues that international organizations (IOs) not only govern global challenges through rules, standards, expertise, and numbers but also through practice on the ground. Much scholarship has been devoted to the question of how IOs become autonomous agents and exercise authority to shape governance outcomes. Far less attention has been given to the way IOs use their field access to govern global issues on the ground-without first going through formal policy channels or renegotiating their authority. The book demonstrates that through field-based practice, IOs directly regulate global issues in the spaces where they become virulent, in different locations across the globe.

The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the European external border, comprising interviews at the headquarters of seven organizations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and three humanitarian NGOs. This, combined with an extensive document analysis, shows that field staff improvise to organize collective action on under-regulated issues and that headquarter staff consolidate and diffuse their operational knowledge. The book conceptualizes this governance mode that operates at a low institutional threshold but largely determines the de facto governance of contested or crisis-ridden global problems.

Author: Nele Kortendiek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 03/17/2025
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.70h x 7.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780198889120

About the Author
Nele Kortendiek is a post-doctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt and Max Weber Fellow at the EUI. Her main research interests include policy-making by international organizations, contestation and change in international politics, and global migration governance. She obtained her PhD from Darmstadt University and holds an M.Sc. in International Relations Theory from LSE. During her PhD, she completed visiting stays at Oxford University and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.