"Reassessing Policy Responses to Irregular Migration in Receiving Democ" by Otoniel Ramos
 

Document Type

Capstone Project

Publication Date

Spring 5-21-2025

Publication Title

Brookings Public Policy Minor Culminating Project

First page number:

1

Last page number:

36

Abstract

This policy brief analyzes the growing use of transactional migration agreements (TMAs) by receiving democracies—bilateral arrangements that exchange financial or diplomatic concessions for the external enforcement of migration control. While politically expedient, TMAs often generate long-term strategic liabilities: they reduce state control over enforcement outcomes, expose receiving states to coercive leverage by partner states, and weaken normative commitments to transparency and rights protection. Using analytic process tracing and formal modeling, this paper identifies four recurring mechanisms by which TMAs evolve into systems of asymmetric dependence. It then evaluates three alternative policy frameworks—Exit Doctrine, Legal Category Reform, and a Structured Conditionality Regime—against five criteria: policy durability, administrative implementability, normative capital preservation, responsiveness to structural drivers, and political feasibility. Among them, the Structured Conditionality Regime offers the most viable path forward: it aligns with current executive priorities by tying cooperation to measurable outcomes, limiting open-ended aid commitments, and restoring control over migration enforcement without requiring multilateral consensus.

Keywords

Administrative Implementability; Audience Costs; Crisis Framing; Forced Migration; Irregular Migration; Migration Drivers; Migration Governance; Normative Capital; Opportunist Coercion; Process Tracing; Receiving States; Transactional Migration Agreements; Transit States

Disciplines

American Politics | Higher Education | International and Area Studies | International Relations | Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation | Public Affairs | Public Policy | Social Policy | Urban Studies

File Format

PDF

File Size

660 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/


Share

COinS