The main argument is that improving migrants’ rights and conceptual linkages between SSG/R and migration is best achieved, by decentring our gaze, namely going beyond the ‘national’ and ‘state-centric’ view that characterizes traditionally SSG/R and to consider the agency of both migrants and SSR actors. First from a migrants’ perspective, it is key for SSR actors to go beyond traditional legal classifications and to consider the diversity of personal situations that involve refugees, stranded migrants and asylum seekers, which might endorse different roles at different times of their journeys and lives. Second, the transnational nature of migration calls for a transnationalization of SSG/R too. For too long the concept has mostly been applied within the national setting of SSR institutions and actors. Migration calls for a clear decentring that involves a transnational dimension and more work among transnational actors and policymakers to facilitate a norm transfer from the domestic to the interstate and international level. As such, the ‘transnational’ nature of migration and its governance needs to be ‘domesticated’ within the national context in order to change the mindset of SSG/R actors and institutions. More importantly, the paper argues that poor SSG/R at home produces refugees and incentivizes migrants to leave their countries after being victims of violence by law enforcement and security services. During migrants’ complex and fragmented journeys, good security sector governance is fundamental to address key challenges faced by these vulnerable groups. I also argue that a better understanding of migrants’ and refugees’ security needs is beneficial and central to the good governance of the security sector. After reviewing the key terms of migration and its drivers in section 2, section 3 reviews how SSG is part of the implementation of the GCM. SSR actors play a role in shaping migratory routes and refugees’ incentives to leave, in explaining migrants’ and refugees’ resilience, in protecting migrants and refugees, and in providing security. Although it cautions against artificial classifications and the term of ‘transit migration’, section 4 reviews what the core challenges are in the countries of origin, transit and destination. Section 5 provides a detailed overview of the linkages between migration and each security actor: the military, police forces, intelligence services, border guards, interior ministries, private actors, criminal justice, parliaments, independent oversight bodies and civil society. Section 6 formulates some recommendations.

The volume places the migration-development-security nexus in the field of transnational studies. Rather than treating these three categories as self-evident, the essays excavate aspects of power and privilege built into their governing frameworks and conflicting rationales apparent in practices of control. Bringing together diverse experiences and case studies, the volume highlights the problematic nature of maintaining distinct and disconnected frameworks of governance. It argues for a new approach that demonstrates the significance and usefulness of comparative ethics in conceptualising migration from a human-centered and gendered perspective in order to address the multi-facetted and multi-dimensional nature and meanings of "security".

This book offers a framework for the links between Security Sector Governance and Sustainable Development Goal-16, highlighting the principles of democratic oversight, accountability, participative approach, and local ownership.

The war in Iraq in spring 2003 was a further indication of the "resecuritization" of international relations triggered by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However, the new (or renewed) primacy of security will be of a rather different nature as compared to the Cold War period. The underlying assumption of the essays in this volume is that security issues will increasingly be approached from a governance perspective and that, in this context, the internal dimension of security governance--security sector governance--is an issue whose rapidly growing importance has not yet been duly recognized. Heiner Hnggi is assistant director of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. Theodor H. Winkler is director of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.