Migration: An Opportunity, Not a Threat?

“Mobility and diversity are already features of our societies: they must be heralded as opportunities and appropriately governed. Migration will happen, whether we like it or not, and migrants have rights which command respect, even irregular migrants. The EU and its Member States would much better govern migration if they opened legal channels for refugees (through robust resettlement programmes) and other migrants (who respond to unrecognized labour needs), and facilitated their mobility, thus taking over the mobility market from the hands of smuggling rings and reducing exploitation and human rights violations.”
(F. Crépeau)

14:30 – 16:30 Migration: An Opportunity, Not a Threat?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmq3zLGI5U0[/youtube]

Moderator: Benjamin Tallis, Co-ordinator of the Centre for European Security of the Institute of International Relations Prague François Crépeau, Professor and Hans and Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, McGill University; United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants Veronika Bílková, Co-ordinator of the Centre for International Law of the Institute of International Relations Prague Radko Hokovský, Executive Director, European Values Think-Tank

François Crépeau is Full Professor and holds the Hans and Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, at the Faculty of Law of McGill University. He has been appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants in 2011. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was a Fellow 2008-2011 of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. The focus of his current research includes migration control mechanisms, the rights of foreigners, the interface between security and migration, and the interface between the Rule of Law and globalization.

The discussion focused among other issues on:

• Why should Europeans organise rather than prevent migration to Europe?
• Why is there so much opposition to and fear of inward migration? Is this justified?
• What benefits and opportunities do migrants bring?
• Migration also brings challenges - (how) can we deal with them?
• What lessons should we learn from dealing with migration in the past?

You can download the invitation here.

More on the topic

• UN tours Central Europe as EU threatens fines to enforce migrant quotas (with Benjamin Tallis quoted). BNE IntelliNews (Benjamin Cunningham).
• Uprchlíci jsou jako gayové či lesby, těch jsme se také dříve báli, tvrdí zpravodaj OSN pro lidská práva migrantů, Hospodářské noviny (Adéla Klečková)