Humanitarian hubris in the global compacts on refugees and migration

The global compacts on refugees and migration are expressions of what I call “humanitarian hubris”. This hubris is manifested in at least three ways. The first is the global compacts’ confidence in the need to manage migration and asylum in the first place, along with the hubris that governments and international agencies are capable of managing global movements in a “safe, orderly, and regular” manner. The second source of hubris concerns the desire for good information, data, and analysis of emerging situations, but only along strictly defined “problem-solving” paths. Third, there is the assumption that questions of sovereignty have been settled, all the while ignoring the active contestations of sovereignty by refugees, migrants, and other marginalized groups, such as indigenous peoples. Taken together, these examples of hubris project a kind of global confidence that makes them blind to other ways of framing the challenges and opportunities represented by contemporary migrations.