Diego Acosta Arcarazo

Visiting Toronto Metropolitan University

Fall 2022

Research focus while a CERC Scholar - Regional free movement of people law: A new field of study for international migration law

The legal regulation of migration represents a critical challenge for the international community and is of concern to states across the world. Surprisingly, in an era of increasing fortification of borders, and broadening categories of migrants outside of the law, policies and laws facilitating free movement of people within a geographic region are experiencing a spectacular rise. Currently there are least thirty-three regional organizations – involving 174 states – with regional free movement law. This project is interested in the proliferation of regional free movement law, which is already transforming global and national mobility regimes, including visas, asylum, smuggling, and trafficking, labor, irregular, family, environmental migration and indeed citizenship itself. The specific objectives of the project include:

• To offer the first definition of regional free movement of people law, thus opening a new subfield of international migration law.
• To analyze each of the components present in such definition as well as their interactions.
• To globally map regional, bilateral, unilateral and soft law measures and norms enhancing regional free movement.
• To assess the transformative implications of regional free movement law by looking at its scope and, in particular, its effects on entry, stay, rights and protection from expulsion, in particular in South America, the Caribbean, East Africa and the Post-Soviet space.
• To reflect on their proliferation, as well as on their implementing potential and challenges, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to engage with empirical analyses and ‘conditional international law theory’.

Related to CERC research theme: The Governance of Migration in a Globalizing World; Managing Labour Migration in the 21st Century

Career Achievements

Diego Acosta is a leading international expert on international, European and comparative migration law. His research is interdisciplinary, and links both practical and theoretical inquiry to offer a novel defense of a rights-based approach to migration regulation. His work discusses migration law as a central aspect of globalization, and analyses various processes of inclusion and exclusion and their profound implications for the rule of law in Europe, South America and elsewhere. He is the author of more than 50 publications and his latest monograph is entitled: The National versus the Foreigner in South America. 200 Years of Migration and Citizenship Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He has also participated as co-investigator in the project Prospects for International Migration Governance (MIGPROSP) which the ERC funded for the 2014-2019 with 2.1 million euros. He has also been one of the authors of the proposal for a Model International Mobility Convention led by Columbia University in New York. He has been requested to offer his legal opinion by Governments, Parliaments, International Organizations and law firms in Europe, the USA, South America, the Caribbean and Africa.

Relevant Publications

Research monographs and co-edited books:

The National versus the Foreigner in South America. 200 Years of Migration and Citizenship Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 278 pages.

S. Peers, E. Guild, D. Acosta Arcarazo, K. Groenendijk y V. Moreno-Lax, EU Immigration Law: Text and Commentary. (Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden/Boston, 2012) 590 pages.

The Long-term Residence Directive as a Subsidiary Form of EU Citizenship. An Analysis of Directive 2003/109 (Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, 2011) 265 pp. Cited by the EU Commission: COM (2011) 585.

Global Migration Issues. Old Assumptions, New Dynamics (Praeger, Santa Barbara, 2015) 791 pp. Edited with A. Wiesbrock.

EU Security and Justice Law (Hart, Oxford, 2014) 215 pp. Edited with C. Murphy.

Selected peer-reviewed journal articles:

‘Political and Legal Responses to Human Mobility in South America in the Context of the Covid-19 Crisis. More Fuel for the Fire?’ (2020), Frontiers in Human Dynamics, Vol. 2, 12 pp.

‘Global Migration Law and Regional Free Movement: Compliance and Adjudication – The Case of South America’ (2017), American Journal of International Law (AJIL) Unbound, Vol. 111, 159-164.

D. Acosta and F. Freier, ‘Turning the Immigration Policy Paradox Up-side Down? Populist Liberalism and Discursive Gaps in South America’ (2015), International Migration Review, Vol. 49 (3), 659-697.

‘Towards a South American Citizenship? The Development of a New Post-national form of Membership in the Region’ (2015), Columbia Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 68 (2), 213-221.

‘The Charter, Detention and Possible Regularization of Migrants in an Irregular Situation under the Returns Directive: Mahdi’ (2015), Common Market Law Review, Vol. 52(5), 1361-1378.

‘Civic Citizenship Reintroduced? The Long-Term Residence Directive as a Postnational Form of Membership’ (2015), European Law Journal, Vol. 21, 200-219.

D. Acosta and J. Martire, ‘Trapped in the Lobby: Europe’s Revolving Doors and the Other as Xenos’ (2014), European Law Review, Vol. 39, 362-379.

D. Acosta and A. Geddes, ‘Transnational Diffusion or Different Models? Regional Approaches to Migration Governance in the European Union and MERCOSUR’ (2014), European Journal of Migration and Law, Vol. 16,19-44.

D. Acosta and A. Geddes, ‘The Development, Application and Implications of an EU Rule of Law in the Area of Migration Policy’ (2013), Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 51, 179-193.

‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in EU Migration Law: Is the European Parliament Becoming Bad and Ugly (The Adoption of Directive 2008/115: The Returns Directive)?’ (2009), European Journal of Migration and Law, Vol. 11, 19-39.