Thread by @nandosigona

The rhetoric of big numbers ('there are 200 milion migrants we need a global response') is producing unplanned side effects. Rightwing parties are using it to mobilize voters against the 'invasion' by foreigners
#CharlesMichel resignation

theguardian.com/world/2018/dec…

There is huge confusion on what the #GlobalCompactForMigration is for and what it can do. It is NOT about the 220 million migrants in the world. This figure includes everyone who has left their country of origin for more than 12 months, is also someone who left Italy 18 years ago

What the #GlobalCompactMigration is really about is an infinitesimally smaller number of people who are moving now and what countries could do (it is not binding) to manage this mobility better.

Better for whom is open for debate. According to promoters is meant to be a win-win-win situation.
Unfortunately what is happening is that nationalist / xenophobic parties have appropriated the UN rhetoric and 'killer number' and are using for electoral purposes.

It is pretty absurd that the Belgian PM found himself forced to resign for a UN compact which is likely to have close to no impact on migrants in his country.

Once again, as we see in Italy with Salvini using day in day out the fear of #migrationcrisis when there isn't one, migrants are just an excuse, a useful tool to gain power and political capital.

Among migration experts many are skeptical about the #GlobalCompactForMigration and what states aim to achieve with it. Behind the #safe #orderly #regular migration motto there is certainly also an intent of creating a buffer zone around Europe.

So to contain the risk of a new Mediterranean #refugeecrisis and stop or reduce irregular crossings. Of course being the UN things are more nuanced and are dressed in a humanitarian grand narrative .

So, oversimplifying, the #GlobalCompactForMigration is driven by a migration control agenda dressed in a classic humanitarian/developmental narrative.

This is why most countries have agreed to sign (not like in the case of "International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrants").

But some countries (eg US, Hu, It) are not playing ball. Instead they are taking the UN rhetoric at face value and using it to score anti-globalist points.
This strategy is revealing of the fact that for this populist movements migrants and migration are only means to an end.

In response to this trend, many have fallen in a knee-jerk defense of the Global Compact, projecting on this instrument meaning and hopes that at a close inspection may appear as misplaced.