Transnational Diffusion or Different Models? Regional Approaches to Migration Governance in the European Union and MERCOSUR

This article compares the regional governance of migration in Europe and South America to show significant variation in approaches. Regional migration governance can transcend the historical and political embeddedness of member state approaches to migration while also providing a context within which the meaning of neo-liberalism is constructed and contested. On this basis, EU and Mercosur provide new settings within which responses to migration are re-thought and within which new approaches have developed, but we find little evidence of the transnational diffusion of policy instruments between the two regions. Indeed, in South America, the regional governance of migration has in part developed in conscious contrast to the EU’s approach.