Attempts to make international migration more orderly are not new. They go at least as far back as 1927 when the League of Nations sought to adopt a convention to facilitate and regulate international exchange of labour. But soon the Great Depression gripped the world, and there was no follow up. In the aftermath of World War II several international and regional organizations, including the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (now the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD) and the European Community (EC; now the European Union, EU) adopted resolutions calling for freer movement of workers to help economic reconstruction. They did not however spell out the details about how this was to be promoted and sustained.
Read the entire article: see Chapter 2
- Geiger and Pécoud: The New Politics of International Mobility - Migration Management and Its Discontents - May 2012