The Global Compact on Migration insists on “facilitating” human mobility. It offers a smart roadmap for making human mobility safer, cheaper, faster and easier. Its full implementation will take several decades, as States will grapple with nationalist populist pushbacks, with debunking myths, stereotypes and fantasies about migrants, with the ups and downs of economic cycles, and with recurring refugee movements. The lack of political agency of migrants in the host country will be a major hindrance to the realisation of all migrants’ rights and the affirmation of their legitimate place in the host societies. Yet, there will be little alternative in the long run, as hardening borders is proving costly, lethal and inefficient.
François Crépeau is Full Professor and the Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, at the Faculty of Law of McGill University, as well as the Director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. He is guest professor at Université catholique de Louvain (BE, 2010-2020). He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the Chair of the Thematic Working Group on “Migrant Rights and Integrations in Host Communities” (KNOMAD - Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, World Bank Group, Washington, DC), as well as a member of the Advisory Committee of the International Migration Initiative of the Open Society Foundations (NY). He was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants (2011-2017). He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and an Advocatus Emeritus of the Quebec Bar Association. He has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Université de Clermont Auvergne (FR). He has given many conferences, published numerous articles, and written, edited or coedited ten books